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Poems from the Unpublished Book of Blues
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I see the backs of old men rolling slowly into black stores
Line faced mustached black men
With army weathered brown hats
Stomp on by with bags of burlap and rue
Talking to secret companions with long hair
In the sidewalk on third street san francisco
With the rain of exhaust
Plicking in the mist
You see in black store doors
Petting trucks, plopping, vastly city
Third street, market, to lease
Has a washed down tile entrance once white
Now caked with gum
Of a hundred thousand feet of passers
Who didn't go straight on
Bending to flap the time-pap page on back
With smoke emanating from their noses
But slowly like old lantern-jawed junkmen
Hurrying with the lump wondrous potato bag
Through the avenues of sunshine
Came bending to spit and shuffled a while there
The rooftop of the beat up tenement on third and harrison
Has belfast painted black on yellow
On the side the old frisco wood is shown
With weather-beaten rainboards
And a washed out blue bottle once painted
For wild commercial reasons
By an excited seltzerite
As firemen came last afternoon
And raised a ladder to a fruitless fire
That was not there
So is belfast singing in this time
When brands forgotten, taste washed in
Rain the gullies broadened
Everybody gone
The acrobats of the tenement
Who dug belfast
Divers all
And the divers all dove
Ah, little girls make shadows on the sidewalk
Shorter than the shadow of death in this town
Fat girls in red coats with flat white-out shoes
Harried mexican laborers
Become respectable in san francisco
Carry newspapers of culture burden
And packages of need
Walk sadly reluctant to work in dawn
Stalking with nutcat in the feel of their stride
Touching to hide the sidewalk
Black shiny last-night polished shoes
Hitting the slippery with hard slicky heels
To slide and fall brebberweck kerack
Dumb kids with thick lips and black skin
Carry paper bags meaninglessly
His mother yelled at him yesterday
And now he goes to work down third street in the milky dawn
Piano rolling over the hills
To the tune of the english fifers
Bric-a-brac pliers on your back
Micmac kidneys in your back
Lick lock the red faced cock
Oy yal he yawns to lal, la la
Meeloom the weary gray hat peacoat ex-sailor
Marining meekly hands a poop a pocket face lips
O mosey the long fat yellow eternity cream
Of the third street bus roof swimming
Like a monosyllabic armored mosasaur
Swimming in my primordial windowpane of pain
What to say to well-dressed ambassadors from death's truth
Pimplike rich in the morning slick
Or sad whitecaps of snowy seamen
In san francisco gray streets
Arm waving to walk the harrison cross
And earn later sunset purple
Just dig that sad old bum
No money, presuming to hit the store
And buy his cube of oleo for eight cents
So in cheap rooms at a.m. 3:30He can
Cough and groan in the white tile sink
By his bed, which is used to run water in
And stagger to, in the real of wake up
Middle of the night flophouse nightmares
His death no blacker than mine
His toast just as well buttered and on one side
There's no telling what's on the mind
Of the bony character in plaid workcoat and glasses
Carrying lunch, stalking and bouncing slowly to his job
Or the beauteous Indian girl hurrying stately
Into Marathon Grocery, run by Greeks
To buy bananas for her love night
What's she thinking? Her lips are like cherries
Her cheeks just purse them out
All the more to kiss them and suck their juices out
A young woman flees an old man
And she got avocados anyway
The furtive girl looks over her shoulder
While unlocking the door of the tenement of her man
Who with big negro Arkansas or East Texas oil fields
Harry Truman hats, been standing there on the street all day
Waiting for the cold girl, bending in thin coat in the wind
The Sunday afternoon drizzle, step on it and get some bread
But papa's got to get some sleep tonight
And the Chinaman's on his bed
No hunger and no wittles neither, dearie
Said the crone to Edwin Drood
Okay, there'll be an answer, forthcoming
When the morning wind ceases shaking the man's collar
When there's no starch in it
And Acme beer runs flowing into dry gray hats
When dearie, the pennies in the palm multiply as you watch
When whistlers stop scowling
Smokers stop sighing, watchers stop looking
And women stop walking in worrying coats
When gray beards grow no more
And pain don't take you by surprise
And bedposts creak in rhythm not of morn
And dry men's bones are not pushed
By angry meaning pelvic propelled legs of reason
Then I'll go lay my crowned body
On the heads of three men hurrying and laughing
In the wrong direction, my idol
Sounding like a machine through the stopped keyhole
Young men go fast on old men
Old men are passionately breathless
Young men breathe inwardly
Young men and old women wait or wail
'Cause there was a sound of slapping
When the angels stole cum
And the angel that had lost lay back satisfied
Hungry addle red face with tight clutch traditional time
Briefcase in his paw, prowls placking the pavement
Towards office girl's rumpled skirt at five
That thorny negro sea captain
With the battered coat who looks like Charlie Chaplin
In the movie about now filmed in the air
By crews of raving rabid angels drooling happily
Among the funny fat cherubim
Leading that serious hard jawed sincere negro stud in at morn
For a round of crimes is Lucifer the Fraud
Besides little girls worry too much
But no one will hurt them
Except the beast whom they'd knifed in another life
In the as well east as west of Bethlehem
Rhetorical third street grasping at racket
I have no time to dally hassle in your heart's house
It's too gray, I'm too cold
I came a wearying from eastern hillsYonder Nabatakee recesses
The eastward to Aurora rolls
Or east of Russet Falls, one
Lost a black haired woman with thin feet
Used to walk down Arapahoe Street in Denver
And make all the cabbies cry
And drugstore ponies eatin' pool and rem sacks sob
To see so lovely all the time
Sure, Paul's Ford got lost in the Depression
He drove over the divide and forgot to cleave the road
Instead put atomic energy in his machine
And flew to find the gory clouds of rocky torment far away
And they fished him out of Miner's Creek
And a whole lot fonder, pardner
Clack of the wheels, my freight train blues
Third Street I seed and knowed
And under ramps I writ the poems of the punk
Who met the fagin' who told him, punk
When walkin' with me to roll a sleepin' drunk
Don't wish you was back at home in your mother's parlor
And when the cops come a blastin' with loaded 45's
Don't ask for gold or silver from my purse
Its milk and hassle will be strewn and scattered in the sand
By an old bean can and dried up kegs we'd a sat and jawed on
Roll my bones in the mortiary
My terms and deeds of mortgagery
And death and taxes all wrapped up