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When she was ten her father left her at a Denny’s—You’ll get back. She walked the other way for miles before a car pulled over, a man shouted You are lost, opened his door to her. Beyond him was darkness. No lights, no signs, no people telling her what to do: she kept walking. Upright, strident, terrified by her act. Terrified she was bad for saving herself.

The bad mother wakes from dreams of imperfection trying to be perfection. All night she’s engineered a train too heavy with supplies to the interior. She fails. The child she loves has taken on bad habits, cigarettes maybe even drugs. She recognizes lies.You don’t fool me

(Alec Soth: "Kenny and Bill—Bad Newz, Grand Rapids, Minnesota") They tilt their guitars and stare. Each boy puts one foot toward Us, one where a trailing wire Would run to an amplifier If amplifiers were there. Bill's Gibson glitters like ore. Kenny's Iba ñ ez hoards White noise in its black fretboard. Bill's double chin shows. Is it fair To mention his pudge? Kenny's hair Gets stuck behind one ear. Each of the brothers wears A T-shirt, loose jeans, and a pair Of bruised high-tops. A pear- Shaped garbage bag hugs a steel bar. The big rectangular blur Behind them looks like the door To a walk-in refrigerator. Maybe dad is a restaurateur, A diner owner who requires Kenny to spend six hours A week moving cases of beer, While Bill chops potatoes, or scours Grease from the checkerboard floor. Bill imagines a national tour: CBGB's. The Black Cat. Hardcore. Or metal: the glow and allure Of arenas and open-air Pyrotechnics at dusk, a chauffeur. Or do they hope modestly for Sideman jobs, L.A. 'burbs, the secure Work of studio engineers? Two boys hold two guitars In a basement kitchen, and care What you think of them. Next year They promise to practice more. Right now their repertoire Is six songs, seven chords, Five originals, and a spare Reworking of REM's four- Minute anthem about a lost car: "Can't Get There from Here."

The summer of nineteen eighteen I read The Jungle and The Research Magnificent. That fall My father died and my aunt Took me to Chicago to live. The first thing I did was to take A streetcar to the stockyards. In the winter afternoon, Gritty and fetid, I walked Through the filthy snow, through the Squalid streets, looking shyly Into the people’s faces, Those who were home in the daytime. Debauched and exhausted faces, Starved and looted brains, faces Like the faces in the senile And insane wards of charity Hospitals. Predatory Faces of little children. Then as the soiled twilight darkened, Under the green gas lamps, and the Sputtering purple arc lamps, The faces of the men coming Home from work, some still alive with The last pulse of hope or courage, Some sly and bitter, some smart and Silly, most of them already Broken and empty, no life, Only blinding tiredness, worse Than any tired animal. The sour smells of a thousand Suppers of fried potatoes and Fried cabbage bled into the street. I was giddy and sick, and out Of my misery I felt rising A terrible anger and out Of the anger, an absolute vow. Today the evil is clean And prosperous, but it is Everywhere, you don’t have to Take a streetcar to find it, And it is the same evil. And the misery, and the Anger, and the vow are the same.

The guys who drank quarts of Busch last night here by the backstop of this baseball diamond had names given them by their mothers and fathers— “Jack” and “Kenny” let us say. Jack might be a skinny guy in a black fake-leather jacket, he’s twenty-five, his gray pants are too loose on his hips, his jaws always have these little black extra hairs, his mother won’t talk to him on the phone, she lives on french fries and ketchup, he hasn’t been able to send her any cash in the last two years, ever since he lost his job unloading produce trucks at Pathmark; Jack’s father disappeared when he was ten. “No big deal,” Jack says, “he was a bastard anyway, he used to flatten beer cans on the top of my head.” Kenny offers a laugh-noise. He’s heard all that before. Kenny is forty-eight, a flabby man with reddened skin, he is employed at the Italian Market selling fish just four hours a day but his shirts hold the smell; his female companion Deena left him a note last month: “You owe me $12 chocolate $31 wine $55 cable TV plus donuts—I have had it—taking lamp and mirror they are mine.” Kenny hasn’t seen her since. He hangs with Jack because Jack talks loud as if the world of cops and people with full-time jobs could be kept at bay by talking, talking loud . . . (I’m talking gently and imaginatively here as if the world of bums and jerks could be kept far off—) Jack and Kenny. (Or two other guys dark to me with wounds oozing in Philadelphia ways less ready to narrate.) Last night at midnight they got cheesesteaks at Casseloni’s and bought four quarts at the Fireside Tavern and wandered into this park. After one quart of Busch Jack said he was Lenny Dykstra and found a stick for his bat. “Pitch to me asshole” he said so Kenny went to the mound and pitched his bottle for want of anything better and Jack swung in the dark and missed; Kenny’s bottle smashed on home plate and Jack heard in the sound the absurdity of all his desiring since seventh grade, absurdity of a skinny guy who blew everything since seventh when he hit home runs and chased Joan Rundle around the gym so Jack took his own empty bottle and smashed it down amid the brown shards of Kenny’s bottle. Then they leaned on the backstop to drink the other two quarts and they both grew glum and silent and when they smashed these bottles it was like what else would they do? Next morning Nick and I come to the park with a rubber ball and a miniature bat. Nick is not quite three but he knows the names of all the Phillies starters and he knows the area around home plate is not supposed to be covered with jagged pieces of brown glass. Like a good dad I warn him not to touch it and we decide to establish a new home plate closer to the mound (there’s no trash can handy). “Who put that glass there?” Nick wants to know and to make a long story short I say “Bad People.” Nick says “Bad? How come?”

Dull to myself, and almost dead to these My many fresh and fragrant mistresses; Lost to all music now, since everything Puts on the semblance here of sorrowing. Sick is the land to th' heart, and doth endure More dangerous faintings by her desp'rate cure. But if that golden age would come again And Charles here rule, as he before did reign; If smooth and unperplex'd the seasons were As when the sweet Maria lived here; I should delight to have my curls half drown'd In Tyrian dews, and head with roses crown'd. And once more yet (ere I am laid out dead) Knock at a star with my exalted head.

Midnight’s merely blue, but me, me, me, I’m through and through sloe, cracked soot- on-a-boot, nicotine spat, licorice whip. You can scratch, scratch, scratch but I stay underskin true to ebony, ink, crowberry, pitch; hoist me up by my hooves and shake till I’m shook, I’m still chock full of coke, fuliginous murk. O there’s swart in my soul, coal by the bag, cinders and slag, scoriac grit, so please come, comb through my fleece with hands pallid as snow and watch how they grow tarry, raven, stygian, ashed— or, if you wish, clean me with bleach I won’t flinch, just char down to a core of caliginous marrow, pure carbon, atramentous, utterly piceous, shadowed, and starless, each clumpity clump and eclipse of my heart raptly re-burnishing a woolgather dark.

Who can face the sea and not inherit its loneliness? — Olin Ivory I Gray sky, gray sea —gray mind, the man thinks. He thinks: To grow old with it and kicks a stone into the water. He mucks at the seam and it crumbles below him. A sea gull beaks a crab, flights vertically and drops it to the rocks. The man cracks with laughter, tossing a stone to a stone. II Working alone means the voice must grow louder, for who can stand to think quietly all through the day’s calculations? I cannot. I let the voice grow loud. I let the voice hum outside my body in distinguishable phrasings, and count the increments as I set the fence according to the blade. All day I stand before a blade and push things into its path. I stand aside as what is removed is whisked alongside me. The smallest particles of   what is removed thicken the air, making a dream inside which one cannot live. All day the voice is learning how to be outside of   the body. III A man is not a beach, nor is he stone, though he collects their entirety in a single thought. He works alone and his thoughts begin to smack of stone. His teeth clatter with their collection. IV A man can hold a secret between his teeth, and it will never leave his mouth, for who would listen to his wavering tune of so sad and how hard and hear anything original? He is that he is — the errand and the fool running to himself over and over only to find that even he is tired of telling about it. To grow old with it was the task, and the question always: would he last? A man can believe in the body and have no one, as though he were ghost or stone, nothing to speak at or be heard from. V All work, no pay makes a body bray. Though he may bray — Though he may bray and bray, forgive him the bit. If he tells you his secret, he will have no secret. This is how one sings a sentence into stone.

for Joe Overstreet, David Henderson, Albert Ayler & d mysterious ‘H’ who cut up d Rembrandts i u worry me whoever u are i know u didnt want me to come here but here i am just d same; hi-jacking yr stagecoach, hauling in yr pocket watches & mak ing u hoof it all d way to town. black bard, a robber w/ an art: i left some curses in d cash box so ull know its me listen man, i cant help it if yr thing is over, kaput, finis no matter how u slice it dick u are done. a dead duck all out of quacks. d nagging hiccup dat goes on & on w/out a simple glass of water for relief ii uve been teaching shakespeare for 20 years only to find d joke on u d eavesdropping rascal who got it in d shins because he didnt know enough to keep his feet behind d cur tains: a sad-sacked head served on a platter in titus andronicus or falstaff too fat to make a go of it anymore iii its not my fault dat yr tradition was knocked off wop style & left in d alley w/ pricks in its mouth. i read abt it in d papers but it was no skin off my nose wasnt me who opened d gates & allowed d rustlers to slip thru unnoticed. u ought to do something abt yr security or mend yr fences partner dont look at me if all dese niggers are ripping it up like deadwood dick; doing art d way its never been done. mak ing wurlitzer sorry he made d piano dat will drive mozart to d tennis courts making smith-corona feel like d red faced university dat has just delivered china some 50 e-leben h bomb experts i didnt deliver d blow dat drove d abstract expressionists to my ladies linoleum where dey sleep beneath tons of wax & dogshit & d muddy feet of children or because some badassed blackpainter done sent french impressionism to d walls of highrise lobbies where dey belong is not my fault martha graham will never do d jerk shes a sweet ol soul but her hips cant roll; as stiff as d greek statues she loves so much iv dese are d reasons u did me nasty j alfred prufrock, d trick u pull d in d bookstore today; stand in d corner no peaches for a week, u lemon u must blame me because yr wife is ugly. 86-d by a thousand discriminating saunas. dats why u did dat sneaky thing i wont tell d townsfolk because u hv to live here and im just passing thru v u got one thing right tho. i did say dat everytime i read william faulkner i go to sleep. fitzgerald wdnt hv known a gangster if one had snatched zelda & made her a moll tho she wd hv been grateful i bet bonnie of clyde wrote d saga of suicide sal just as d feds were closing in. it is worth more than d collected works of ts elliot a trembling anglican whose address is now d hell dat thrilld him so last word from down there he was open ing a publishing co dat will bore d devil back to paradise vi & by d way did u hear abt grammar? cut to ribbons in a photo finish by stevie wonder, a blindboy who dances on a heel. he just came out of d slang & broke it down before millions. it was bloody murder vii to make a long poem shorter—3 things moleheaded lame w/4 or 5 eyes 1) yr world is riding off into d sunset 2) d chips are down & nobody will chance yr i.o.u.s. 3) d last wish was a fluke so now u hv to re turn to being a fish p.s. d enchantment has worn off dats why u didnt like my reading list—right? it didnt include anyone on it dat u cd in vite to a cocktail party & shoot a lot of bull—right? so u want to take it out on my hide—right? well i got news for u professor nothing—i am my own brand while u must be d fantasy of a japanese cartoonist a strangekind of dinosaurmouse i can see it all now. d leaves are running low. its d eve of extinction & dere are no holes to accept yr behind. u wander abt yr long neck probing a tree. u think its a tree but its really a trap. a cry of victory goes up in d kitchen of d world. a pest is dead. a prehis toric pest at dat. a really funnytime prehistoric pest whom we will lug into a museum to show everyone how really funny u are yr fate wd make a good scenario but d plot is between u & charles darwin. as i said, im passing thru, just sing ing my song. get along little doggie & jazz like dat. word has it dat a big gold shipment is coming to californy. i by to ride all night if im to meet my pardners dey want me to help score d ambush

Badu: This cyclone of good fortune. You handling? Kendrick: Happy blessing myself. graduated          , struggle come big           far a blur . Problem is           my bubble.                    Tell me “You’re crazy            by yourself,” “Kendrick” I’m in my own world. let everything consume me. The other end, has a conception of who what comes from me, from within no matter passing            or playing ball. Was a               hole            building up for this pen,                      I wanted to be the best so I’m taking it.