THE THANKSGIVING STORY

Note: In order to begin my Second Section, I will open with this LONG Thanksgiving Story, which I have sub-numbered, so you can read in small doses. Please stay with it. It's a good story, there's lots in, and Fabo Fio and the Grand Teton story is a gas too. It is NOT difficult, and it's cool to read. Also, please check out all the other numbered items, from #43 down. It's all equally important to me; as well as the OTHER sites, like my photo-blog and the Interview. Contact me - njabate@aol.com

45. THE THANKSGIVING STORY:

1. SOME GUY WITH A WAY-BIG MOUTH:

Somehow they said “I want to know what every man wants to know” AND wearily I turned about and said “WHAT pray tell is that ? I hesitate to ask?” and someone replied (like some Sunday School idiot of the high plains of drifting) : “where did I come from and where am I going?” and I said “that’s so simple and plainly put as to be disgusting and you’re no different than anyone else in that you’re ‘going’ wherever you bring yourself to and the only substantiation you’ll ever get is your own idiocy staring you back at the face and let’s right now list too a few words which can be attributed to your tribe of butyl-oil hard-wired tack-welded idiot savants : ‘ignoramuses idiots malfeasants miscreants fakers mistaken hordes of hospitality false harbingers of hope and happiness foolish laughers in crowds of three wide-angled receivers of death and nothing else hopeless paragons of bad virtue ill-suited demagogues of consumption and disease myriad levels of mongers of stupidity drolly dragging the depths of insanity putrefied fossils of filth illustrious losers misplaced angle-irons and adders of twisted logic certified and sanctioned bellwethers of crap long-winded desperados - and I could go on but I won’t! – and another thing is that this is a personal matter it differs for each and it all is entirely up to you and it’s usually a solo operation for sure and something which is based on revealed information and only by true work and pure thought and perhaps even an attained state of grace and detachment does that revealed information ever start coming your way and you also need to know how to read it and an awareness of the situation truly would mean you’d not discuss it nor want to but would instead MANIFEST it alone by works and works which need no words so the shortcomings of your approach show thru greatly and I know by this that you - like all men - are full of claptrap and prattle and go on and on about nothing” and even for myself I felt right then as if - had I been a major league pitcher able to reach these idiots through sports metaphors at the best it would be a ‘Sermon on the Mound’ to them yet currency is all they want and these things remain current and in speech are bandied about like snack-time conversation around some strange water-cooler of the mind both high and dry together and I’d known many men through my days and women too and not a one of them meant anything more substantial - save one or three cases - than a powder-puff daredevil derby of premise and mistaken assumption : a ‘lick and a prayer sort in a shot and a beer joint’ to paraphrase the last drunk I’d ever spoken with (one Thomas Emerly whose father was Dan) and I knew I was in the midst of some places I shouldn’t be and in the midst of conversations between people I’d not want to hear but I remained as distant as the cosmos and as far-off as a star to them and liked it that way too LIKE A LOCAL TRAVELER seeking the source of steel.

(“….Nothing more than that ever – nothing more than that I swear…”)

2. ITS NAME WAS ERROR:

It was in essence no different than a stench or a rotted-meat maggot smell of something you’d not want to smell BUT nonetheless there it was and its name was ERROR ! and as I found out it lived in a camp among men and made by men and it kept time with every sort in tents of carnival atmosphere or in the depths of sadness and funereal modes and covered in blackness or wired for gaiety it went on and it spoke few words but let others do its talking for it and MY MY there were many who’d volunteer for that and AT TIMES LIKE THAT – when only a similarity will do – we found it to be present and growing too and it’s been called ten million things in the course of time but many words remain the same and redundancies align hilarity finality spirituality duality hospitality idolatry plurality sodality ON AND ON but it all means nothing and it all is but LIES and as EVIL rules the world so the world is Evil’s Kingdom and a galloping man on a twice-blind horse would know nothing more than that nor need to BUT you can change all things too (someone once told me that) and “we buried Joe alongside the sea and threw out his ashes too (and I figured ‘how can you do both?’) and started laughing myself at the story I’d heard - about the Evil King who’d killed the knight because when he asked for the man’s Will and Testament and all possessions to be turned over to him the knight replied ‘yes I have much but it’s too early to give it away for I’m not dead yet’ at which the King ran him through to death with a lance and said ‘you are now my fine fellow!’ and began laughing uproariously (and it was just that sort of story which often made the rounds at precinct houses or high-club schools in which the privileged get to laugh at the impecunious) but SO BE IT as they used to say and instead – just today – I sat at a table right next to three cops from Elizabeth New Jersey their shoulder patches said and as they ate I listened intently as they compared notes and nothing more on various houses and persons along their areas of patrol and it was very clear to me how much of simple observation this law and order thing really is for these three gents had it down pretty plain - the very ‘what was normal and what was not’ about the way this yard looked or that character looked or how he was carrying what no one knew and how oddly out of the ordinary this or that was and the other people seen there and the cars they were in and the way the one guy upon the top step was looking out and very many simple reminders of all that we are : the very way we make our minds betray our acts or stand out sublime in a world of repetition and these three cops thought nothing (obviously NOTHING) of any of it except the horrid normal routine of living and I wished for them a deliverance of their own and almost prayed right there that they should somehow someday soon be introduced to the higher things which exist and which effect our actions and alter our world and I thought of sadness right then THEIR SADNESS in living this way at the grounded dead dull dumb potential of nothing by which they thuddeningly surpass their efforts and live their lives - and I thought ‘what uplift what goodness what happiness what wisdom can ever pass their brows?’ and I thought that if they had families and mothers and wives and children and saddeningly too how it all must seem for all involved but ERROR is the menu of this day and if no one knows the difference that WHO AM I TO SAY! so remaining quiet myself I simply watched them eat away their bread and pasta and salads and all the rest figuring it must have been some weird day-after-Thanksgiving policemen-on-break repast at Spirito’s too no doubt allayed by tension fatigue and fear all rolled into one for them - and here they are at ‘Spirito’s’ no less (an ironic name for them) the spiritless dull dullards passing the time away in a simple threesome of want and circumstance and doubt.


3. THAT MONUMENTAL FOG AT THE BASE OF THE BRAIN:

I once (another time) remember a fellow telling me (this was at a place called ‘Gateling’s’ on 7th Avenue between 14th and 15th Streets – the kind of place frequented by ‘washed-out widows and violence queens’ and along with that pesky Irish drunks flagrant homo wretches and the tweezer-besmirched false-beauty crowd of ‘too much booze and not enough money’ woven though all their conversations) – that he’d always looked at death as the ‘sleep that knows no dawn’ which I’d always thought was a pretty-good phrase and which he’d said had been told to him by his very own father on some one-long binge of fruitless fruit-juice and vodka weekends right before he really did die of that very same potion and it always stayed well both with ME at the hearing of it and with Archie McMahon at the telling of it (all the same to the both of us) but there’s always a time when you remember someone - even if it’s forty years later - for something they said or some habit they’d do and it was these sorts of twinkles which gave people their singularity among the many in one’s mind and it’s easier to sort people out by how they did things or how they’d look doing it than to remember any name/rank/serial number kind of crap about them so (let me put it this way) this is the way I sort and collate and differentiate among the people I’ve known - by what they’ve done with me that I remember them by - and for all the rest they can go straight to Hell for all I care (the sullen measly sorrowful lot of them living in Evil’s Kingdom and professing a love for all that) and if the devil draws a double than put me in for twice because I swear by all that is that I’ll kill him first if ever we meet for the world is a rotten place and it’s besmirched by dirt and foulness called both good and great and ‘sometimes Satan comes in the name of the Lord’ well by Jesus if that ain’t the way it’s always been than nothing else is true and the world’s all a lie anyway (these things I know for sure – it all being revealed and privileged information to me come down from on high) and I’ve read Leviticus and I’ve read Job and I’ve read Enoch and I’ve read Isaiah and I’ve read Ezekiel and all the rest and everything I’ve ever known is right now bursting at my seams to come forth and bring goodness to all the world and change the ways of all Mankind for every time a tree is felled by a bastard I resoundingly utter aloud “Woe to you who connect house to house and field to field…” and that’s from Isaiah too YOU CAN LOOK IT UP.


4. JUST STARING AT THE GOOD TIMES:

And well it did me good to see developers lambasted like that (even if it was but on thin parchment) and I smiled at that one and read on and everywhere I read I found satisfaction - all the ‘woe unto’ this and that each and every made sense to me and made me gloat at a come-uppance to happen soon (I once forecast just the other day a two-year’s hence ending to all) and someone had scribbled in my margins some joking few lines about wives and girlfriends - ‘I love her every hole and the pucker of her asshole too’ and whatever that was (I couldn’t exactly recall) I tried to remember but found myself thinking only again of the twenty-some girls I’d used to know hiding askance along the lower east side and frequenting tempestuous dives of the Vietnam era when every fourth guy you ever heard from was dead or about to die in some stinking gook-haven of vengeful military rightness and all these girls were pining pining pining for something to remind them of what they’d been missing (the answer – I was told – by Andy Bonamo was ‘dick dick and any dick’ll do’) and he was probably right because they seldom kept their clothing on and before long quite everything was a’jumble on some hovel-crumbled floor (and all around us screaming were Puerto Ricans of every lousy stripe hanging on steps and stoops and streetside curbs and as they stood there foul with liquor and gruff of tongue I have not a clue as to ever what it was they were saying) BUT all that was long ago – when I had no glimmer of dying myself and no idea what some future would hold and only now so many long years along as I look back I see all the faces who’ve passed and moved on and only I am left to tell the tale but it’s a gimcrackery gimmick for me to make and you to listen and before long I was late for my father too and the only sound I heard was the sound of plastic and crap - but that was the ‘modern’ day brought to you by the following corporations thank you: KodakMonsanto3MGeneralDynamicsBoeing and Merck and no difference between them (‘the killing fields the killing fields we’d lie down so low in the killing fields and the flamethrowers wiry wave of flame came shooting across and it had my name’) and ‘the little girl in Cassie’s Restaurant along Route 7 in the stinking Jersey swamps WELL she knew my name and how to make my eggs sizzle and pulse and I lathered her every open pore with genuine love and affection’ that was said to me by Tim Collins who lived in Kearny third house from the swamplands and he’d tell me always about the dumped bodies and open boats and the midnight lights of the small craft seen amidst the reeds and grass where something something was always going on but no JUST TODAY I go there lonely and see nothing but buildings and guardsheds and some fucked-up asshole security guy sitting in his dumb blue car just watching who’s come by to trespass and take a peek and snoop around or take a leak and once I look up and see it’s Roland Smith himself - all sallow-jawed and wasted sore and looking like nothing good no more - I just keep gaping at the gaucheness of that scene and the black girl in the parking gate says ‘what are you doing here?’ and I tell her ‘I just want to turn around’ and she lets me in like a goon and I muttered as I passed ‘I could’a been a killer and just lying to you you fool’ but nothing comes of it as nothing ever does and there we are JUST STARING AT THE GOOD TIMES for no reason at all and none for sure I could ever figure out.


5. THAT SIMULACRUM OF LIVING I WITNESSED ANEW:

And just like that it was dark out and the cold winds were blowing and there was a white hoarfrost on everything and the entire scene was tinted by that white and the lame sun arose slowly like a too-heavy tomb of life encased in its own orb and the orange turned to yellow turned to white itself but a white too weak to prosper and the dead-seeming world lingered well past its prime as the depths of the day met the ice of the nights and soon enough everything was over and the entire length and breadth of creation had died and withered and rats scurried in early daylight seeking something anything new and the few birds left tried living as they’d done but found it hard and the shortness of days met the long lengths of night and the calendar itself - having drifted from joy - seemed staggered and sorry with its very own blight but along the reaches of the sour earth trailed mankind - tired and soiled and weary and done - and their souls as one all sought for the light and their souls as one tried reaching for that which they wanted (but had forgotten to ask for) and betrayed by emotions their tired heels wandered slowly amidst sorrow and danger and cold and deprivation and want - millions and hundreds of millions wandering between whatever seeking consort seeking comfort seeking all that once had made them glad but finding nothing instead but conflict and cant and the tiresome palaver of blemish and rant - FOR THESE ARE all mankind’s days and they are numbered and finished soon and as the death sinks into the earth so too do they themselves - like the shortness of days - wither and die before rebirthing again.


6. THE NIGHT I MET FABO FIO (and all that he there said):

There was one day when I went back to see Archie McMahon at Gateling’s just to shoot the breeze and see how things were and what if anything new was running for him and I did finally get there and already he was in the midst of some wildness with people there before him but the evening turned out for me to be as weird as anything else was in those days and my making contact again never really brought me anything but confusion but there was - right alongside him - a strange character to whom I was immediately interested in some roundabout way (to my chagrin) and it turned out once more to be a meeting I’d not forget but before I knew the actual scene and people involved I did just walk in one some particular strange conversation (more monologue actually) in which this fellow sitting next to McMahon had been going on and on quoting the poet Rimbaud (he said) back to the barmaid who was slowly getting flustered - which is a hard case to make for the usual run of barmaid at McMahon’s since for the most part before they had always been men but slowly girls and women had been taking here and there a shift and another and another and it did all add some to the gaiety and raucous whatever of the place - but anyway I heard him saying that this was called ‘On the Edge of the Grand Tetons’ and then he proceeded with - “in French you see my dear a teton is a ‘tit’ as we know it or breasts as they’re called and of course our own ‘Grand Teton’ Mountains mean basically ‘Big Tit’ Mountains and if you’ve ever see them there is a great and passable similarity to be had’ and of course they’ve never wilted or sagged either you see over all this time and that’s a lot to be said for poised stability and the rigidity of great and basic concepts - would you not say? - but regardless Rimbaud actually did title the poem ‘Au Caberet-Vert’ which seems self-evident and his words were ‘tetons enormes’ and they’ve been often translated as (and with) ‘voluminous tits and flashing eyes’ in toto (which translation I like) for if you look at it ‘voluminous’ itself is a very interesting word for this use as it contains in its essence BOTH ‘volume’ and ‘luminous’ which can be a great quality for Tetons wouldn’t you agree ? anyone ?’ at that he looked around the bar as he proclaimed aloud again the question to no one’s answer – no matter – and then he continued reciting : ‘Contentedly stretching my legs under the green-topped table / I’m studying the décor when - wa-hey!- up flies / the bar-girl with her voluminous tits and flashing eyes / (Getting past those defenses shouldn’t prove much trouble)’ and I really must ask you dear lady NAY ALL of you here isn’t that just a great-enough image for us all?” and then chuckling to myself as I watched even McMahon’s staunch jaw stay dropped through the silence I - without blanching - responded in turn “mood quickened mind / and man of wit / cunning in rings / bound bravely to the wallbase” and then it seemed it all simply turned to fun as he replied back very loudly to me (to anyone actually) “the world beyond / staying just the same / only moreso” and then he began applauding himself or us or everyone I really did not know - and so I figured we’d hit it off and tapped McMahon on the back right then and said “Arch my man what’s up and how’s it all been going?” and he greeted me in turn alike and smiled broadly saying “oh oh well good just fine pull up a seat listen in let’s go on and oh OH this here is my friend” and as he said that he motioned for two of us at once as if he really wanted to do but one introduction and that’s how I in turn met and he met me this one ‘Fabo Fio’ as his name was told - “this this here is a friend of mine for some time now Fabo Fio you may call him Fab of course – full name Fabrizio Frederico Arturo Fiorelli but long ago switched changed alter shortened whatever to a quite more workable Fabo Fio and everyone know just calls him that” and we shook hands as we there both stood for the moment – no barmaid in sight thankfully – (for to be so allied so quickly with the embarrassment of riches of the man who bespoke Grand Tetons in a roomful of horned-toad men and one quite presentable lass would already cause me problems before it even started) but no matter that either we went on and had quite the fun for the remainder of a long dark and COLD OUTSIDE night and we exchanged all sorts of notes and tirades on words and poetry and attitude and everything so connected and the simple three of us together became then fast friends and all three wiser for it and eventually – curiosity killed the cat anew – I turned us back to Archie’s recollection of my still not quite remembered quote of recent vintage wherein I’d been unable to exactly remember the wording to the one with the ‘I love her every hole and the pucker of her asshole too’ or whatever that previously quoted attempt had been – for I knew all the while that either of these two would know it exactly – so I asked and DAMN IT ALL if both of them almost in a drunken unison of unsettling practicality didn’t pipe right up with the exact wording of that which I’d sought (and this caused a row a round and another great bevy of laughter to be sure) “for sure for sure I know it well” (one of them was saying) it comes from a recent something or other by one Chris Logue writing of Agamemnon and the sea as the sailors pine for home : ‘I love my wife / I love her dearly / I love the hole she pisses through / I love her lily-white tits / and her nut-brown arsehole / I could eat her shit with a wooden spoon’ and if that’s not longing my fellow than I don’t know what is ! but it’s a wonderfully apt shot at description I’d say” and Fabo it was wailing with laughter I heard and then he shouted out “Cleavage! Cleavage! / Queen of the foaming hole! / Mammoth or man or midge / she sucks from pole to pole” and the laughter took a whole new round as by now most everyone had turned to watch this strange and odd little sideshow we’d undertaken and soon enough others too were pitching in – a verse or fragment here another there – to all some great effect and I enjoyed the time greatly… ‘I was sixteen I said / Where is Achilles?’ … ‘stuff Greece!/ your blubber-bummed wife with her gobstopper nipples / hates Troy because Paris put her last when we all stripped for him!’… ‘and Our Lady of the Thong lifted her other hand and removed a baby cobra from her hair / and dropped it straight / onto Diomed’s neck’… ‘slew of assiduous mediocrities! / Meek Greeks!’… ‘Ah Prince! / your trumpeter has lost his breath’… and lastly right then Fabo himself arose and proclaimed loudly ‘Do not DIE because others have died! / Do not show them the palms of your hands!!’ and the room – as one – broke into another great applause and congratulated the man - it was quite the sight to see.


7. MORE TO BE HAD:

And then it was McMahon who wearily said “I think exceptional things can be done in a hat box with tweezers and library paste and a handful of paper clips and banal things on the roof of a great cathedral SO no ambition by itself is ever enough and it’s easy to look at poets who dined year after year on ambition and had nothing to show for it but indigestion BUT just as regimens can be virtues so too for most poets each is a path to vice - like some stupid English poet inscribing a railway schedule onto the head of a pin” and we each had NO clue what he meant yet we KNEW what he meant and Fabo replied “I like the plain distance of England – the postal codes the gilt pound coins the minor views across the fens the snarl of rail lines the rhythm of sentences and all that – but for Heaven’s sake SO WHAT and why none of it has ever gotten me a thing and INSTEAD my dear Archie you’d do better to concentrate on a nice pair of American legs or any legs for that matter and be the happier for it because to Hell and back with all that European talk and rubbish about finesse and culture and the rest of that shit - all they want is security and money like anyone else and a fine French pair of titties to boot - so move on and forget the pining please ! you’re in America now with its long wide plains and fat tall trees - Lassie – THREE MORE BEERS HERE NOW QUICKLY!” (no no I hadn’t a clue whether game or routine or whether these two kept this steady banter merely as a means of reaching better inebriation – for I think we’d all reached that point by now BUT you wanted it ALL and I told you it would be a raucous ribald and a riotous read DID I NOT ? I really can’t recall)…


8. LEAVING QUICKLY FOR SOME OTHER OUTPOST:

And somehow just like that we reached a point of equilibrium wherein I’d become accustomed to the two of them - drunk or not - and their most interesting take on things combined as it were with an almost improvisational street theater atmosphere done instead from the regal outpost of barstool and seat - and the words (almost it seemed) never stopped and everything was near-ribald and ribbed with humor and it did just go on and on : “Fabo here seems always to have a waitress in his pocket as it were and it’s a good thing too for the factor of his charming the panties off most everyone he can find speaks volumes and bodes well for anyone else’s proper middle age” spoke Archie over to me “the very first night I met him he had two little angels hovering at his every word” and I replied “well may it be but the only action I see here is that of diction and regret - and both of them leaving quickly for some other outpost” and he agreed by saying “yes yes but none of that matters - they’re all ‘CHARMED’ by his essence” and maybe that was true for as I thought about it what made him different – even here in a city of cosmopolitan virtue and strange comings and goings – was a sort of fey indifference to category or some ultra-European hipness which belied his 60 years or whatever it may have been and yet somehow it all added up to his success - perhaps a vast education or a fine grasp of words and language or an incredibly deep resource of memory and lines recalled - but no matter what it was most certainly refreshing seeing as how most of the everyday lot of meager folk around now were as boring and insidious to decay as anything else so that his one bright effervescent shining spot of hot light drew all eyes ears and attention to the wonder of something different itself and then I again heard him speaking aloud : “yeah I do love the antique and the old stuff - those great marbles of words rolling around in the back of everyone’s near-empty attic and they just don’t DO ‘em like that anymore - today’s stuff is just cant - another word for garbage and it’s the stupid professionalism that bothers me the endless bullshit networking and little tight magazines and art-craft crap the clammy handshakes the look over the shoulder always poets ‘poets’ this and that pining for something or another lost world ancient time the romance of ‘true’ living - to hell with it all - they all look like well-scrubbed recruits anyway for some professional training program somewhere in the mogul-maw of the next big industry ALL conformists with bitten nails worrying about no more than their shadows shitting and it’s all played up for what it’s not - some faggy poet propped up somewhere in the front of a room before an antique typewriter and an easel-topped display of some old tome opened to page 79 a quill and some old crap parchment - almost as if they’d just awakened the poor fellow to read aloud to the roomful of hat-boxes and homos - and it’s a surprise to hear anything right emit from their cock-sucking mouths half the time ‘quite often pregnancies go wrong / and when they do that’s sad / it sometimes happens if your stressed / or pregnant by your dad’… oh yeah I dare them! ‘anyone who prefers the light / has not explored the dark’ but hey LET’S ALL risk quaintness for something else OK? ‘there is sun in the mirror my head in the trees / there is sun in the mirror without me / I am lying face up on the riverbed / my lover is swimming above me’ but anyway I ask you this [‘you you fellow’ – he said – meaning me] why are poems that can be absorbed and appreciated while frying eggs and sausages bound to be mostly shit?” and I realized at that point the light was on me I was on parade on the spot in the middle of a dare and yet I had nothing I could do about it except produce what I really felt or really try and outdo him in his ways of superfluous and dramatic banter YET a part of me just wanted to be at rest and give up the show for I was of a different nature – I knew that but they did not – and really did not take in stride either showmanship or pride and in my stupidly feeble way I guess I here attempted something “I don’t know the feeling I can’t relate to that frying eggs and sausages stuff it’s too homey and warm and reminds me immediately of the smells which go with it and adjudging poetry or understanding poetry is distant from my mind at such an instant although I get your idea I understand the motive of trying to say ‘why’ is something that can be understood in the most mundane of situations probably garbage – since it CAN be understood and thus negating any of its own density and meaning but I would ask instead why are you trying to understand poetry while frying eggs ? you see ? I mean to say why cannot you fixate the mind instead on right then what it is doing and make a poetry of that rather than diluting and mixing the moment with bad comparision?” and I knew that was risky but it had already been said and I wondered if it were to be taken as a refutation a challenge or ridicule any or all of the three but he seemed to just brush it off as the start for another of his own thoughts and it went pretty well as he said “yes yes I see that too a good point indeed - dedicating the moment to the work of the spirit AT that moment - good idea for true oneness and all that…reminds me of ‘the parties are over / a blue smoke will lull the bathhouse / skirts succumb below the knee / nipples are ice-cubed / cigars no longer sell / a gaunt guy sets off in a borrowed hearse’ because it’s like that too - every little delicious morsel of some moment standing all by itself alone - no connections no modification no context - that’s the spiritual eye of real true dimension taking over our each-living moment along some quick curve of time” and then I heard him say as well “the lifeboat glugs into a world of rust” (which I really liked and just right out told him) “some schmuck named Roddy Lumsden – a Jew perhaps from Lebanon Ohio himself”