I get off the airplane thinking about the national football league. so many deranged autumns have passed. i'm back in town where they have spotted the nephew of alger hiss roaming the magazine stands.all throughout the streets, talk of uprisings, wandering through groves, military plots unraveled.
my studio apartment has burnt to the ground -- i'm left huddled in the doorway of a local tavern in the middle of a rainfall; my only possessions are the sunday new york times and the work clothes on me. i gave everything i had to my workplace and it ended up a dream, blown away by lack of financing. i remember mr. bings ale house, just off kerouac street, in north beach -- the buffalo bills on the 12" television in the corner -- the bartender goes grim as the bills front seven tires, giving up large chunks of real estate (8 yards, 17 yards, 9 yards, 31 yards) -- his football pool dissembling -- he pours our beers methodically, in stunned silence, at 10:12 a.m. PST. the bills down by 20 with 8:43 to go on the 4th. islamabad on fire. sadr city ripped to shreds. the waves of the sea are loose and wild tonight. all the grey world has set it claws on the glorious one.
I won $41 on a horse race in a wretched OTB establishment in cheyenne, wyoming in 1997 -- old men, wandering, drunken, lost, visions of past world wars, adrift in visions of hackensack 1906. pre-robots. pre-escalator. pre-spiral notebooks, pre-heavenly cloud over trumbull, ct.
for chausen, i translated the diaries of royal princess sevaan star, as transcribed by her faithful guardian jean-korrel viktoras.like me, you have walked from the darkened outskirts of ridgefield, down 33, past the silent fountain, into the pale glow of town below lamplights at 3:15 a.m. (late-june 1989).
Po Chu-i, you are a math tutor who dreams ALWAYS of the west, and the endless water.
oOOstarshipOOo
