pacobooks

Do I speak of dirty things? That is not the worst that could happen. It is not when the truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.

Zarathustra

This is an attempt at a tribute (it is something else, too) to the soul and laughter of Blacks mostly but not exclusively women who helped me Be what I Am.

Edna’s at the top of the list. This is dedicated to Edna and all the others who helped rear me in spirit, warmth, humor, music and truth, and with a deep loving apology to the woman at the station…wherever they are.

PACOBOOKS

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

November, 1994.

Playpen breakout
Vague memory
Still with me
Of Blue Light Energy
Perhaps a blessing
From the Baal Shemff
Something sundered
The bars of the cage
The full space was mine
Found a piece of pipe
On the floor of the closet
Made a line of holes
Around the room
Perhaps some understanding
Of negative space
For the first time
The holes were filled
Most of them
With the pliable contents 
From my dropped diaper
Close to 18 moons old
At that point
All this happened 
While my Guard
Was in the bathroom
In an attempt to dissuade me
From projects like that
Some taught me
To read the alphabet
Before I was two

So I worked the sidewalks
The fences the CCC latrine
In the park by a stream
Where I jumped with both feet
Onto broken glass
The shouting of letters
Dismayed Clarissa
Who turned me over to Ysabelle
Who soon moved elsewhere
But left the sister Edna
In her place
These Black Women
Enlarged my soul
But it was Edna
Who clearly made me know
That screaming S H I T
Was not her favorite song
So the readings diminished
But the words stuck
In the front of my new head
Still small maybe four
Coming home from some school
Edna was hiding from me
In the house on Bluestone Road
With my frustration
She appeared from nowhere angry
Let me know Directly
I could not Be like that
I loved her so I buried those words
For years to come
Charlie Hudson played piano
Around that time
One of the few whitesiders
Who knew what I liked
No wonder I bought
A '54 Hudson
For my trip to Mexico
In the summer of 1957
One of my favorite Hudson songs
Had something to do
With a horse named Napoleon
And the prospect of rain

Seven and flying
Edna with me all the way
My first crystal ball
Glass elephants on a ribbon
And going with her
To her place and her friends
The Greatest Blessing
Anyone might get
With her there one day
I asked what was 
This Devil's head
That sat upon a sill
Bright red and beatup
I throw that down she said
When I'm angry
Sometime that year
I howled nigger
At a rubber boot
That would not fit 
The word was nasty new
No meaning yet for me
But Edna's visage
Took me back to the front
Of the tunnel of blood
And shame mostly shame
I would not say that word again
Till the day years later
In the Dark Tunnel
But shortly after
I did ask mom
What does I spelled it
F A R T mean
We were walking along
Through the pines
Near the lake
Disgusting she said
And I knew that was it

For some years then
The words became guns
Cap guns wooden guns
Water guns thought guns
Early I knew that backwards
Guns = snug
But it made little sense
Since the finger
On the trigger 
Never fully dispelled 
That pack of energy
In the brain
Then on the playground
Skinny Malcolm pissed me off
For the last time
So all those pent-up words
Rushed out
Astounding me
I never touched him
All those hidden words
Ones I didn't know I knew
They withered him down
To the very ground
He was taller than
Any of us
One word I held back
I should have
Used it then
There were dark things
In store
In the tunnel

Soon we were thirteen
A year of constant miracles
One was a box we made
That we could lock
In contained our Cockbooks
A stolen tampon
Images of various sorts
And occasionally a copy
Borrowed of the Kinsey Report
Someone contrived SPUS
With no connotation at first
But soon it stood for
The ubiquitous extended
Middle finger
Huddy would wiggle that finger 
Out of his fly in English
I got the detentions
For unwarranted raucous laughter
Mrs Adam signed the slips
With that very phrase
And I got a handle on Bastard
With a minor epiphany
When I realized that Uncle Don
Had used that word
When they left the mike open
After what turned out to be
His last show
And that was the year
We named the poor soul who inhabited the Bryn Mawr
Railroad Station
With his derby and checkered coat
Freaky Balls
God bless him
Wherever his parts are

Then came The Year of the Tunnel
How I survived must have been
A Blessing from Edna
But I was still thirteen
A cousin just my age
Would be allowed
To spend the night
From time to time
We all knew there'd be
Trouble when he came
After a visit
Where Nothing Happened
I got permission
To walk him to the P & W
The fast trolley
That went from 69th Street
And Norristown
The far end of the line
We bopped across
What was then just a field
With a low place
Where after dark
It was just you
And the stars
Then the Villanova Station
With its dank tunnel
Beneath the tracks
A Black Woman sat calmly
Near the tunnel steps
Waiting for her train
In the Middle of the Tunnel
We traded evil eyes
Shouted NIGGER and BOOGIE
From the tops of our lungs
Don't know who was first
Don't care
Wouldn't go into
That tunnel now
For anything
We flaked the walls
And quite possibly
Broke the world
We left the tunnel
Darted up the path
Through the Villanova campus
Had forgotten our madness
Dancing down to Old Route 30
Lancaster Avenue
Past the huge Catholic church
Mean words forgotten
We heard A Voice
Are You The Boys
That Was Callin Me Nigger
Like a freight train
And since I couldn't spell
A Fright Train
Never did I know
Such terror
And I felt why
Cuz and I traded eyes
We're gonna die
We dashed pell-mell
The light against us
Four lanes of traffic
I was hoping for death
Couldn't pray to god
Seeing Edna's face before me
Smell of screeched tires
Horns howling
Stumbling up the steps
Across the trolley tracks
A car was waiting there
He waved g'bye slid in
Train Woman
Was coming up the steps
Oh that I had had
The strength to meet her then
Not so I fled
Walked for hours
Down and around
Back home way after dark
Folks want to know
What trouble had occurred
And I've never told
Till now
Stopped prayers to god
That night
What god would hear
Let alone forgive
Such horrible shit
Prayed to Edna
Cause I knew she might
God Bless You
Dark Woman
Wherever you are

Many years later
I heard the story
Of the man coming up
The church steps
And finding a woman
In a heap
Is Mass Out she mumbles
No he replies
But your slip is torn

The years did their duty anyway
Names in reverse
Rang through the halls
A guy who worked in the office
Started the business
Of calling us
By our mother's name
They got Ellen
My second mom
They never found the first
Later that year
Jules whacked off after school
In one of the biology rooms
For months afterwards
JOOLS rang throughout
Our schoolspace
Mr Price vice principal
In charge of vice
On the stage screaming
He did Not want to hear
That word ever again
As he took a breath
Jools sounded out
From somewhere down behind
And in the army in Japan
Years and years later
I met Jules' cousin
It was hard to get to know him
And in the dimestores
One could buy for a dime
A plastic tube
With a hole in one end
A cork in the other
Water was first
Then juice milk ink
Mr Price put a stop to it
When some came up with piss

Last year in the benign prison
Women I couldn't have
Epiphanies on the sense of time
And then putting piss
In the dispensers
Which were always empty
In the washroom
That I used
Before the late bus home
No one save Gooch
Knew about that
Not even Mr Price
Nor did I summon the forces
To help me ask Elinor out
There was a lot
Of happy smiling
And friendly words
But I never even
Shook her hand

So I came to know
The House of Blue Light
Which has certainly helped
On this sentimental journey

I winked twice
Time passed or at least waved
And there we were
The five kids stuffed
Mostly in the back seat
Me telling back from the beach
Stories and jokes
Did you hear the one
About the Boner family
Baby Boner Mama Boner
And Pop A Boner
Sand in the eyes and ears
Then they told me
That Nixon freaked
When they told him
That someone had written
He name in the snow
In the Rosegarden
It all came together with that
Well some of it
No shit Nixon's name
Pissed in the snow
In the Rosegarden
Oh Ghost of Christmas
Where are you
His eyes like a drunken
Pangolin's
Rayed out wobbly
There's Good News
Said the agents
Sent out to find the truth
Good News and Bad
The eyes twisted
What's the good
The urine's Kissinger's
What's the bad
The handwriting's Pat's
More snow god more snow

If and when I pray
It's Edna in that space
And the woman on the platform
Waiting for the train forever
I have night trainmares
About once a season

So now with hair all grown
I shovel dirty words
Across the land
Meditate upon them
Recall the breakthrough
Made at great expense
By Lenny Bruce
Go down on Shakespeare
When I want a real fix
Just now someone stuffed
Their child's head
Beneath a waterbed mattress
For talking dirty
Better a matrass
Filled with absinthe
Or even goose's piss

Anything significant
Storms and weaves
Waves and particles
Beyond words
So why bog down
In a dumb sound
Take that sound of a word
Hold on to it
With no thought at all
Try it first
With your own name
If you really know
What it is

The sound that is the last
Shall take us past the Past.