LET HIM DRINK ONWARD TO HEAVEN

74. 'LET HIM DRINK ONWARD TO HEAVEN':

You are sometimes left with a pile of nothing and it’s that kind of nothing which drives you forward keeps you going even under the black night of the sky wherein you can no longer see anything yet of which you dream myriad countless depth of field stars as thick as paste and feathery light in the sky and you wake up remembering the vivid sensation of galaxy and stars and planets and constellations fat and rich over your head but then note the real situation which is you’re lucky over Manhattan to see a hundred feeble stars trying to shine only that and nothing more buy WHY is that it’s because there’s no conscious reason in such a place to have a sky having already sundered most all connections with the cosmos having agreed to put all that aside and erect the physical constellation instead of cold hard object and there it is in that which people live worried more about parking than darkening worried more about right than light for ‘there is no sense in the senselessness of space’ like these existential and curvy ants trying anything once - and ex-Presidents shave in Harlem sinks while the ghost of Adam Clayton Powell stinks and his brethren linger at the soda counter Rosa Parks and Sharpton Al dissemble wherever they can find a bus to sit in for it’s all that simple battered ruined broken bare ruined choirs count those fires catch the liars and even the political do-gooders fish in waters filled with acid-etch instead of good old H2O they say Al Gore rented a car in Buffalo and drove to Chappaqua and got there at 3:30a.m. for nothing but a long talk the rest of the night a long talk [that ain’t much] over coffee and biscuits and beer and wine a long long talk over 911 and what to do now that the buildings are gone politicize the capital since we can’t The Capitol so they sat around till daybreak and went their separate ways but nothing in the world changed except maybe the level in the gas tank and did he did he return the car I want to know and a head full of ideas driving me insane don’t stop thinking about tomorrow Tennessee Waltz JFK’s favorite tune Al private joke Linkletter Lenny Bruce discovering cancer at the YMHA uptown branch sacrilegious associates international Knights of Pythias high exalted masons Doctor Doolittle raging bull fight fire with fire Alice doesn’t live here anymore amazing grace ding dong the witch is dead the wicked witch the witch is dead ! and this leads to that and that to this so listen up class this is Shostakovich again for sure writing music for Uncle Joe who’s taking the fifth OR AT LEAST DRINKING IT “chattering monkeys dangling from their poles and children whirling in their roundabouts THE STONE EATER the man who eats fire the mighty mother and her Son who brings the Smithfield Muses to the ear of the Kings OH STRANGERS of all ages the quick dance of colors the LIGHTS AND FORMS TO BABEL DIN” what the voracious city devours it must eventually disgorge in rubbish and excrement so isn’t that why GOD gave us rivers ? ‘no more my young man for we are far too many and too much chemistry passes and the rivers already are foul’d and choke’d and clog’d with all that human passes and flows but what can we do about it anyway think back not so far long ago when the wooden bridge over Canal Street drew hundreds an hour drawing water and horses along their way would stop to slumber and drink and snooze and nary an errant Injun ever stopped who didn’t recall those wonderful days of old and then the stuffy Englishman Sir Al of Goreham Woods once Earl of Clinton with high nose high comes to see and spitting out Latinate phrases as quickly departs “anything sordidum (dirty) or morbum (distressed) should be forbidden within these Utopian walls for are we not building a space a place of refuse and grace yet you are having it turned to a conundrum of mire and filth and disease things I cannot abide – excrement dropped anywhere and everywhere even within the houses like some London of old a vat of deteriorating health alas horse dung cesspools strewn with the offal of butchers and wooden chips and kitchen refuse rotting foul Pissing Lane Dunghill Lane Puddle Dock all leading then to Pater Noster Lane so bad we were glad to say a prayer there like some dank and dark encumbered London of old you have ruin’t too this fair’y new land”’ and at that I noticed the tapping rat black and rich and oversized going right for his leg but we moved him before he’d be bit the dumb arse SO UNCLUTTER ME BOYS WITH THE SHITS OF THESE STREETS AND LET ME DRINK ONWARD TO HEAVEN! - (they sing back it is heard: ‘let him drink onward to Heaven.’)