The Ghost of the City of New York Appears in California, May 25, 1971
It's all in a day's work the door from Life to Death
Muhammed Ali comes in one door and Russ Meyer comes in
t' uther While Ali
Stages a CONFAB at 11.00 AM but doesn't
show all the cameras and tape-recorders are left
With their tongues hanging out in the heat
Under the veranda I just recoveredd from food-poisoning & look up
AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND SHAKE HANDS
How'd you doo
It is prophetic I meet a child born at the same hour
and day as my oldest child
I learn your Anglo grandfather became the
ArchArchimandrite
Of Alexandria “for all the Greeks downunder”
MOHAMMED ALI GIVES his speech finally “On the
Intoxications OF
LIFE” (That's for Real, Folks) and tells one girl
sitting up near the stage to
pull her dress down because it was “showing”
above her knee That's it it's all Over wham boom!
Now Russ MEYER must be the “greatest” genius of America (?)
His “genius” lies in that he is the only one to successfully
make blood spurt from a victim
on the silver screen like a slide trombone carying a hilarious note
.... So
many things have happened The People's Liberation Army
has seized the Israeli Ambassador ('Ray'.) Bedford-
Stuyvesant exploded again (I wonder what's happening
on Killens' block?) and lava has overflowed on (Mt) Aetna (again)
Can't keep upt with it all
This Hermaphrodite running up and down the stairs with
a sword Hey!
The doors slam open the crowds emerge
Like an age ashamed of itself
Like an elephant with a caulifflower ear Some are doing
A St. Vitus dance and shooting fireworks
out of cactus-launchers
You come toward me like a diffident haystack
I'm talking to you all the time you pretend not to hear me
You're with your two pals (One of them the “returned” of the Boogey Woogies) the road parts us like a part in the hair
of the whole Earth and splits me with it
The stars make a sound like a tuning-folk
Maybe I'm learning anew lanaguage to speak a newlanguage Maybe
What is this Cult of the Fedora hat
and the jalopy of the heart
Rose of Lima Unbeliever that I am I believe in you so much
“Plebiscite” “Dolores”
....
“Quitting Time”
Washerwomen in the elephant grass 're listening
Once again I come upon an evening 5,000 mi. away from (New York)
the mirage of “The City” become so obsessive
I see Skyscrapers appear moving through the fog
on horses' legs!
“With no interjection..., oh?”
New York my poems are always an elegy to you
The horses see me coming
the horses smell the sunset wing Zapata...in whiteshadow
still rides on it
Gold-club-headed exorcized Jewish demons
happily hopping backwards
May 25, 1971
2405 Alpine Road, Ca.
Copyright Credit: Sotere Torregian, "The Ghost of the City of New York Appears in California, May 25, 1971" from “I Must Go” (She Said) “Because My Pizza’s Cold”. Copyright © 2002 by Sotere Torregian. Reprinted by permission of Skanky Possum.
Source: “I Must Go” (She Said) “Because My Pizza’s Cold” (Skanky Possum, 2002)