DUMBSTRUCK PROFOUND USELESS AND ALL

286. DUMBSTRUCK PROFOUND USELESS AND ALL - (an adventure along Washington Street) :

“Do you see what they’re all like how can it be that they’re all alike and at the same time how so many things can crumble and fall away to make everything different ? ‘buttle scut or scuttle butt it’s all the same to me’ Joaquin Balagueur or John Betancourt whoever it was he said that on the balcony which only later collapsed with 33 people on it and falling from the third floor to the ground killed 11 – all actual dynamic numbers – and like the footnote to Revelations says (John) ‘1000 means infinity as 12 means perfection as 144 means quintessence as 7 means righteous harmony as 777 means perfected infinity’ and the man in the snakeskin cap says ‘whatever it is you don’t bring that back’ and nothing worse than water has ever passed my lips - what the Gypsy takes the Gypsy gives - and any God worth his salt would know that on the back of every mirror another image lives” so I threw my tender cards down on the Sunday table and closed the cabin door as all four of us settled in for more of something and something more as the latter day preacher took to the floor STARTLING the crowded oasis as he said : “God made something out of nothing (you see) and then hung that something on nothing (you see) so here’s where we’re left (whosoever is REAL shall BELIEVETH in me!) in this reverie (well DO you see?) deciding on clothes for our Garden to be and DO NOT let my heart harden but LORD ‘till I see ! and we each let TOMORROW be” and then shy shy Rita Cooper herself jumped up on the table “WHY do you treat your body as the enemy ? I do really want to know ? why do you harbor such envy at all I wish to know?” and with that she stripped to her nothings-at-all on the little glass table before us DUMBSTRUCK PROFOUND USELESS AND ALL as at once we watched the dilemma unfurl until Father Time introduced himself (‘Earl’) and improved the situation by bringing it to a close and ARRIVING JUST IN TIME as one dimpled buttock of Rita’s pride sagged and the other quite near fell and all losing interest declared “TRULY this passing of time it is Hell!” and as nothing ever came from nothing the street-side side-liner swelled and the shadowed something of TIME’S OWN SHROUD removed any doubt from us and the crowd as just that quick Sunday morning returned wherein I have decided to do nothing and so with that (idleness Devil’s workshop all work and no play make Jack want to stay if you don’t take a chance you’ve got nothing to lose six of one half dozen of another I’ve heard all that before tell me something I didn’t already know Stella McCartney knows the score: DRESS like a QUEEN act like a whore) 15 birds are singing of something on the outside porch where the thermometer lingers and the hanging brush grows and the 3 cars passing are traveling no more as 2 feet up and some red wine in hand I listen to Beethoven (WHO MIGHT UNDERSTAND) and time passes slowly up here in the night ‘we stare straight ahead and try so hard to stay right’ and just then a new deliverance entered the scene and ABSTRACTEDLY SO AND OH SO SERENE I listened some more : “to understand Tintern Abbey one needs an eye made quiet by the power of Harmony (who is a left-handed female Goddess of some furious fame) and the true power of joy as we SEE INTO THE LIFE OF THINGS for within a person of light there is light and getting back to the Goddess again (HARMONY stands her name) she had great dreams while I would dream merely of people getting murdered and people counting hamburgers and she would dream about hillsides and beautiful words and if you bring forth what is within you THAT will save you AND ONLY THAT ! and if you DO NOT bring it forth THAT IT IS too which will destroy you!” and then all of a sudden what to behold but ROTHSTEIN rolls in shouting of gold !!! betraying his motives and declaiming his people UNFAMOUS STUPID AND BOLD – “once more we have a new Tyrant telling us everything and a male Tyrant as well DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND ? the severity of all that ? do you not see the mass mindful and controlling orthodoxy which is ripping our culture to shreds NAY WHICH HAS ?” and with that I stood up and said back “let me tell you what I want in the hopes that no one will listen I was born at the Bayonne Bay on the Kill Van Kull which ships transversed like nothing else and laden deep with cargo and fuel and all the raw materials which once went into industry’s passage through time long ago every hull filled with swagger and the juices of work and nothing else mattered nothing had worth except what sweat men produced in making a product for this was a world still reeling and sinking in anger’s debt and the vile note of every hatred then known to man YET no books passed by on those waterways soiled and Sartre and Camus and Aristotle and Locke (and Lao Tsu too) were never entered for life at this table and so it was that I was brought forth from people who knew or made nothing of value but work and its curses and long the lines of men (and their hearses) would pass by my doorways and young and still raw I tried understanding each thing that I saw and every maiden above me or lesser at whichever doorway or floor or vanity or dresser was trying so hard to make something up whether face or idea or family or pup and these were my years in silence and dread that I watched what came out of man’s daily bread and all that I’d heard I was sure was untrue but I put Faith in front of each step with my shoe and so thus protected walked gleefully on like some furious lamb to some slaughter confused and alarmed with every tree’d leaf a William Blake in disguise and something within me felt all those lies and the thousands of memos and white little lies and each man who fell was damned by his tries and still SOMETHING THERE WAS GREW HIGH TO THE SKIES and tower’d infernos and multi-laned streets across from Manhattan like Kipling or Keats I kept that strange eye going to and sent fro until EVEN I learned the language through which I would grow and only that it has been – through all these fair years – which have kept me and made me IN SPITE OF MY FEARS and so now if you listen I’m sure you will hear what I’m trying to say or trying to bear so leave me some leverage still shut on this Earth to make my way forward or (at the least) find what I’m worth.”

…(you can’t put SOMETHING back if you’ve never taken it away)…