Classic Poetic Dysleixa

Edgar Allen Poe, Hart Crane, Willam Yeats 1916
Frank o’Hara, Bukowski, Ginsberg,
The Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam
Ezra Pound, Emily Dickenson, Sylvia Plath, Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva
Every one of them considered mad to write poetry.
My words of madness find me on the George Washington Bridge resisting the urge to fly
Hart Crane’s supposed last words to his sailor assassins were ‘Good-bye everyone.”
Some other people prefer these.
“Fuck you. I’ll show you courage.”
He hung his jacket on the railing and jumped overboard.
Fcuk you indeed.
Classic Poetic Dysleixa in honor of a poet lost at sea.

May 3, 1978 – Journal Entry

Am I a poet?

Some people think so

Not many

But most consider poets wastrels without money

Today, tomorrow, yesterday

Throughout time

Poets have suffered

Scorn, hatred, ridicule, apathy, love, and poverty___

Hart Crane wrote THE BRIDGE

A brilliant poem

How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest

The seagull’s wings shall dip and pivot him,

Shedding white rings of tumult, building high

Over the chained bay waters Liberty—

Sailors threw him off a ship
In the middle of the Caribbean.

Edgard Allen Poe

A msytery death

Last words

“Lord, help my poor soul”

Byron was struck down by fever

Fighting the Ottoman Empire

To Free Greece

Friendship is Love without his wings!

Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure;

men love in haste but they detest at leisure.

The great art of life is sensation,

to feel that we exist, even in pain.

And Joyce Kilmer was slaughtered

Along with millions of his generation

In the trenches of France.

None of them sought these deaths.

Death just happened,

Despite the magic of cadenced words and syllables.

Languages molded far from the public.

Now few people read poetry

And even fewer hear it spoken.

I recite my poems to the walls

Of my small room

In a seedy SRO hotel

My drunken neighbor bangs on the wall.


“Shut up already.”

His three words cast a spell.

I go silent.

The only poets making money are singers.

I can’t sing,

So I work as a waiter.

As the Rolling Stones sang,

“It’s the singer, not the song.”

LATER

I played softball with the crew from EST. My position was right field. No one hit in my direction. Ann took over pitching in the fourth frame. I hit a triple in the fifth and our side had a one run lead. She kept them off the bases. In the last inning a young actor from Kansas hit a ball sharply. Ann raised her glove too late. The ball struck her face.

She spun around, as if she had been shot, holding her head. I ran from right field. Her theater friends clustered around Ann. They stood shocked by her pain. I kneeled and held her right hand. Her left hand covered that side of her face, which was red from the impact.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” stammered the young actor.”

“It’s not your fault,” answered Ann and the studio director, Kurt Dempster, asked, “Do you want to go to a hospital. Maybe your nose is broken.”

That was the last thing any actress wants to hear and I said, “It looks fine to me, Ann. Breathe deeply.”

After a minute Ann stood up. “I’m okay.”

She sat out the final outs and I sat by her side.

After the game we went downtown to my place. My drunk neighbor was playing on his sax. I asked Ann if it bothered her.

“No, I like Coltrane. Will I have a black eye?”

“No, but if you do, it will be cute.”

LATER

Why am I content with poverty?

I haven’t had a ten-spot in my pocket for days. My Irish grandfather and namesake would leave the house with less than $500 and that was in the 40s. I wish I was the same, instead I’m a pseudo-intellectual beggar.

After our fight about Anthony accusing me of stealing money, she said to him, “Peter wouldn’t steal. If he wanted money, he’d get it from me.”

I do love her.

In the meanwhile I’m waiting for my tax return check. I’m getting thinner and thinner. Marc Stevens asked if I wanted to deal cocaine. I said no. I tried dealing in Boston and only ended up deeper in debt. Right now I owe everyone money. I see no solution other than work. I tried to get a taxi job. I needed $75 to get the licenses. Nothing is free.

Ann is in love me with, but fears dependency on me. She’ll probably leave for her own good. I wish I could do the same. Sadly I’m stuck with me.

Summer is getting closer.

Last year in Brooklyn was a disaster.

This summer is looking to be a repeat.

Damn. Damn. Damn.

That’s the best poem I’ve written this year.

A Long Memory

Published Dec 5, 2011
Degenerate Art had been denounced by the Nazis as un-German ie Jewish or Bolshevist. Josef Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda, organized an exhibition of Entartete Kunst in 1937. The SS acted as curators for the show by confiscating the works of modern artists from museums and private collections. The assembled paintings, books, prints, and statues were arranged into three genres of insults to the German people. The opening in Munich was such a success that Goebbels sent the exhibition of an eleven city tour of the 3rd Reich, after which the choice pieces were distributed to the Nazi hierarchy. Over 4000 were torched by the Berlin Fire Brigade possibly inspiring Ray Bradbury to write his science-fiction classic FAHRENHEIT 451.

In November 2001 a Koln auction house offered a Wassily Kandinsky watercolor in its modern art sales. “Zwei Schwarze Flecke” had been given to a young lady by the artist. The aquarelle had been confiscated by the Nazis from a museum, although the auction house stated to the press that the family had given away the painting in the 1920s.

“The sale will go ahead, We think this claim is totally unfounded.”

This opinion differed with that of the heirs, whose ancestors were exiled to Siberia and died in poverty.

I checked Friday results of Lempertz Kunsthaus sale without finding a record of the painting being sold.

Please go to this URL : http://www.lempertz.com/444.html

The art world lifted its head from the trough of Art-Basel/Miami to react to my friend’s blog citing an article in bloomberg.com

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-01/nazi-loot-claim-fails-to-hinder-planned-cologne-kandinsky-sale.html

UK female – mmm sounds like North American aboriginal claims using oral evidence.
Yesterday at 7:34pm · Like

Art

Spive – Shameful

Me – the indian were here before that cute johnny apple seed and the nazis financed their power through theft. the truth will out

Female French – Did max ernst’s ‘the fair gardener’ ever resurface? it was categorically field in ‘entartete kunst’, as “insult to german womanhood”. its like 1 of francis picabia (sympathiser / collaborator!) “transparencies”. late in life, max ernst made a sequel work, ‘the return of the fair gardener’.

UK Female “grab what you can” the auction house for the present owner/the claiment heirs?

Furious Male – Clearly the heirs deserve this work. It is part of their heritage in that their ancestors had the taste/foresight/vision to show an interest in it and buy it. I am just thinking of the auction houses…”grab, grab”, and using any legal or other loophole they can find – even if the only loophole is a feigned uncertainty about the provenance.

Zionist Female – BOO HISS SO ANTI-SEMITIC, the auction houses who don’t give back nazi looted art that belongs to jewish owners who suffered in the holocaust. such great art!

Furious Male – How long have they had this stuff, or at least, how long have they waited to let the owners consign it? If they could have held out another 50-75 years maybe nobody would have noticed. I still have living relatives who fought in world war…

Of course this vector pertains to many injustices in the world and I decided to enter a new subject into the fray.

ME – on a tangent trajectory how does this subject pertain to the Palestinians right to return?

Degenerate Art had been denounced by the Nazis as un-German ie Jewish or Bolshevist. Josef Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda, organized an exhibition of Entartete Kunst in 1937. The SS acted as curators for the show by confiscating the works of modern artists from museums and private collections. The assembled paintings, books, prints, and statues were arranged into three genres of insults to the German people. The opening in Munich was such a success that Goebbels sent the exhibition of an eleven city tour of the 3rd Reich, after which the choice pieces were distributed to the Nazi hierarchy. Over 4000 were torched by the Berlin Fire Brigade possibly inspiring Ray Bradbury to write his science-fiction classic FAHRENHEIT 451.

In November 2001 a Koln auction house offered a Wassily Kandinsky watercolor in its modern art sales. “Zwei Schwarze Flecke” had been given to a young lady by the artist. The aquarelle had been confiscated by the Nazis from a museum, although the auction house stated to the press that the family had given away the painting in the 1920s.

“The sale will go ahead, We think this claim is totally unfounded.”

This opinion differed with that of the heirs, whose ancestors were exiled to Siberia and died in poverty.

I checked Friday results of Lempertz Kunsthaus sale without finding a record of the painting being sold.

Please go to this URL : http://www.lempertz.com/444.html

The art world lifted its head from the trough of Art-Basel/Miami to react to my friend’s blog citing an article in bloomberg.com

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-01/nazi-loot-claim-fails-to-hinder-planned-cologne-kandinsky-sale.html

UK female – mmm sounds like North American aboriginal claims using oral evidence.
Yesterday at 7:34pm · Like

Art

Spiv – Shameful

Me – the Indians were here before that cute johnny apple seed and the nazis financed their power through theft. the truth will out

Female French – Did max ernst’s ‘the fair gardener’ ever resurface? it was categorically field in ‘entartete kunst’, as “insult to german womanhood”. its like 1 of francis picabia (sympathiser / collaborator!) “transparencies”. late in life, max ernst made a sequel work, ‘the return of the fair gardener’.

UK Female “grab what you can” the auction house for the present owner/the claiment heirs?

Furious Male – Clearly the heirs deserve this work. It is part of their heritage in that their ancestors had the taste/foresight/vision to show an interest in it and buy it. I am just thinking of the auction houses…”grab, grab”, and using any legal or other loophole they can find – even if the only loophole is a feigned uncertainty about the provenance.

Zionist Female – BOO HISS SO ANTI-SEMITIC, the auction houses who don’t give back nazi looted art that belongs to jewish owners who suffered in the holocaust. such great art!

Furious Male – How long have they had this stuff, or at least, how long have they waited to let the owners consign it? If they could have held out another 50-75 years maybe nobody would have noticed. I still have living relatives who fought in world war…

Of course this vector pertains to many injustices in the world and I decided to enter a new subject into the fray.

ME – on a tangent trajectory how does this subject pertain to the Palestinians right to return?

Thirteen years later and still no response.

Montauk Train # 7

An hour after the Dawn

An eastbound diesel train

The 8:18 to Montauk

Top speed

60 mph

Fifteen minutes

Out of Jamaica___

Sun climbs the sky

Approaching Babylon


A swimming pool

Empty

Until

A winter blizzard buries Long Island___

And the snow melts

Fills the pool

To the brim___

Two months

Ahead

Of today

A White Christmas

Wintah 2024___

Anarchy in the UK – CBGBs

In November 1976 the Sex Pistols released ANARCHY IN THE UK on the UK. The revolutionary punk song was immediately banned by the BBC. The British authorities were worried about the sensibility of the royalists. Within the week ANARCHY IN THE UK was # 1 on the charts without getting any airplay.

Describing the social context in which the band formed, John Lydon said that mid-seventies Britain was “a very depressing place … completely run-down, there was trash on the streets, total unemployment, just about everybody was on strike … if you came from the wrong side of the tracks … then you had no hope in hell and no career prospects at all.”
America was no better post-Vietnam after eight years under the rule of the Silent Majority. I fled the racism of Boston to New York, working at gay restaurants. Naturally I somehow found CBGBs and instantly became a punk.

Hilly Krystal, the owner, stocked the great jukebox with the Ramones, New York Dolls, Blondie as well as JOLEEN by Dolly Parton. We thought we were the only punks in the world and gloried on striking out against everything, but we were wrong and one night in late 1976 someone played ANARCHY IN THE UK and we were not alone. The Sex Pistols changed the scene. Punk was everywhere. LA, Boston, Germany, everywhere.

And still is.

Forty-eight years ago everything changed.

Forever

At least for us.