Teenage Wasteland [reprise]
The
Who
“This music crept by me upon the
waters”
— T. S. Eliot
Arrested by an abrupt minatory staccato of ponderous monosyllables. A dizzying vortex of beating wings & flying drapery. Enigmatic images that serve to penetrate the lizard brain. What bulks large is a strong element of the phatic. Hey you — don’t walk on the turnips! Good God, when will they ever learn it? The broken fingernails of grubby hands. [Don’t cry, don’t blink an eye. It’s only teenage wasteland.]
I set off, I take up the march, I set off. I put my queer shoulder to the wheel. I rush out as I am & roam the streets. Unreal town under the brown fog of an autumn dusk. Dance of death across a chalk-grey sky. Then comes a memory, a rope, a string of jittery lights. Town’s end that peter’s out to rats’ alley. Where the dead have lost their bones. Down Greenwich Reach, past the Isle of Dogs. Let’s go, let’s go, & make our visit. [Don’t cry, don’t blink an eye. It’s only teenage wasteland.]
The who & the why don’t count no more. In the mountains is where you feel free. Where there is no water, only rock. Gonna go south in winter, gonna tan beneath a new summer sun, gonna spit out all the butt-ends of my youth. I’m no Prince Hal meant to take the fall, no. I’m the Fool, that’s all. These are the pearls that were his eyes, look! Oh, there will be time, there will be time. What’s that noise? Who are those hooded hordes? Those who arrive to cultivate the fog. Spend a penny on the ailing old guy why don’t you. ‘Jug-jug’ to dirty ears. My health seems threatened, terror comes, I sleep & wake to the same sad dreams. [Don’t cry, don’t blink an eye. It’s only teenage wasteland.]
un(en)titled
Dear Jean-Paul Auxeméry: I am lonesome, alone, & sore a’feared. It is Tuesday April 21, two o’clock in the frozen afternoon in a frozen basement apartment in a frozen city in an even more frozen country where I am perpetually broke & always in debt. I’m not interesting I’m not interested I’m so sick of Berlin or Toronto or Prague or/& wherever with its lurid & melancholic lighting of faux film noir. Strings of dead horses bloat the roadways, this, & pastel painted rows of block-&-plaster houses. Where nothing happens but the wallpaper. Where dentists continue to water their lawns even in the rain. Gone are the days of the Havana-Veracruz overnight cruise ship. Gone are the days of those bronze-skinned Spanish craft-workers whose altars, sugar skulls, sugar paste animals, candelabra, & papercuts, etc., were among the finest. Gone are the days we ate potato salad on a sunny patio surrounded by dahlias, drunk on wine, a texture of mumbled words & wild laughter, ending with the conjugation of French erotic verbs; when Isamu Noguchio stepped on Yoko Ono’s Painting to Be Stepped On with a pair of elegant Zohri slippers; when naked dancers infiltrated the Sculpture Garden — remember? we captured fireflies in jars & hung them as lanterns in the evening — when Art disappeared into everyday life. So much for the “Generation of the 80’s.” Yet, the phantom limb reveals the illusory rule of the world it haunts. A butterfly flaps its wings in China & the ground trembles in NYC. Dear Jean-Paul Auxeméry: who are you? where are you? what do you do? are you famous? I copied your name from somewhere out of an old lit mag I’d leafed through in a used bookstore because I liked the sound. Since you ask (you did ask, didn’t you?), most days I can’t remember. Frightened by the gnash of hydrogen & oxygen binding. The tarantula rattling at the lily’s foot. Wasn’t it Jenny Holzer who said, “People who go crazy are too sensitive”? Perhaps. Dear Jean-Paul Auxeméry: your head is a green bag of narcissus stems, you twist darkness between your fingertips. The domain of poetry is blurs & blurts. Slowly the poison the whole bloodstream fills. You might as well be talking to a radish (nota bene: instead of pulling a gun I think I developed language skills to deal with threat). Dear Jean-Paul Auxeméry (how I enjoy repeating your name): do you realize how beautiful it is to reach out & touch someone; how good it feels to share molecular orgasm with a friend? Please, protect me. Protect me from what I fear I want — to be put on the morning train, kissed, & given my ticket to a comfortable steady job in the suburbs — the single purpose to walk through snow.
Hello, Jacqueline?
Hello, Jacqueline? … Are you there? … It’s me … It’s 4:40 pm, Toronto time, Monday, as you must be aware ... Can you believe? … The sky is perfect today, just like yesterday, just like the day before, almost viral ... Dreadful has already occurred ... Even the walls are flowing, even the ceilings ... Fratricide of the unexpected pretty but not edible (sorry, an [vain] attempt to say something someone would say — any something, any someone) … A friend of a friend, you know? The story & how it happens … To whom it may concern, so on & so forth … Following Andy Warhol’s dictum: “I want to be a machine” … Cars parked off the sides of the roads covered in dust & bird shit … Fire a cannon down Yonge street at rush hour you don’t injure a soul … Individuality ceases to exist … Allen Ginsberg’s: “I am looking for the true cadence” … Fine … Jean-Paul Sartre’s: a human being “is what it is not” … What the fuck? … Words throw themselves across the floor, bad actors reciting worse lines … We’re all pretty intelligent, but are we smart enough to stop paying attention to how intelligent we are? … I mean, if you’re going to buy a pair of pants you want them to be tight enough so everyone will want to go to bed with you, right? … That was Frank O’Hara, a poet you admired, yeah? … YOU said: just because we made love in Montreal doesn’t mean I have to cook for you in Zanzibar — wow! super, I won’t forget … Meanwhile … Keeps thundering, never rains … Faces irresolute & unperplexed … Breath quiet but violent … Sleep impossible, dreams vividly surreal (night of the living dead, giant rats, dismembered dolls [strange, those eyes again, & they’re radioactive]) … Should I be frightened? (I am) … This morning in 100% humidity my hair went straight … [I doubt God is kind, well-meaning, good, I doubt God [[enter here, as if on cue, the Four bloody Horsemen of the freaking Apocrypha, ha!]] … “Sanctuary’s polka dots are imperfect, expressive, roughly painted, & evoke individualism, but en masse” … In a fit, in a funk, they complain (who? they, them, you know): “It’s almost over the top neo-baroque — cultishly formal, closely set with visual features, hyper-referential — but it is lavishly invented, detailed, particular in its language, & so, fully realized” … blah, blah, blah … It goes on … People living high & dying low … It’s as if no one has heard: wear heavy rubber gloves, rubber-soled shoes, avoid electrical wires … Aw, shut up [gotta admit, I dunt wanna be self-reflective no more] … Hey, did you hear about the suicidal glazier who wrote a novel entitled Gone with the Window? … No? … Do you know the joke that goes: a sewing machine & an umbrella meet on a dissecting table & the sewing machine asks … Okay, yeah, probably, doesn’t matter ... People everywhere — have you noticed? — are eating truckloads of avocados & injecting Lysol; are talking about moonburn, moonbath, & about touching the sky … Well, do you know how beautiful it is to touch each other? … Just saying … Have you seen the horizon lately? … The plausible form thinks itself a garden … Reddish-gold that blackens into mountains … Whatever … Pretty quiet on the block after the 7:30 pots & pans concerts … Once the raccoons & skunks venture out, I go inside … Keep the house cool by pulling down the shades, crack a beer & read Proust’s À la Recherche du Temps Perdu … Not true, but you know that, & my French … Anyway … I’m using up your answering service … I miss you … Call me … I’m home … Where else …
[I wanna be sedated] [reprise]
The Ramones
What a difference a day makes. Twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty-four little hours. Suddenly too sunk in scholarliness to observe what should be observed. I’m dehydrated, I’m running in neutral. As in a forest of trees if it rains & they are not heard the rain drops & they are not heard yet. Who used to be the shit now ain’t worth shit. Hard on the outside, numb on the inside, that’s me in a nutshell. Nowhere to run to baby, nowhere to hide. Ah, quick, quick, quick. Toss me in a wheelbarrow, stick me on a bus [I wanna be sedated].
Hast du etwas Zeit für mich? Do you have some time for me? Maybe even a little? [I mean, I might like you better if we slept together. Just sayin’]. I walk alone & never say good-bye, let me go (let me go). Get away, run away, far away, how do I [repeat same line: Get away, run away, &ETC]. Listen, this is an important moment. I won’t be fooled by cheap “Pop Muzik” theatrics. A case of lousy luck, really rotten luck, I’m screwed. Nowhere to run to baby, nowhere to hide. Ah, quick, quick, quick. Flag me down a taxicab, ship me parcel post [I wanna be sedated].
Too late to die young die pretty. Come as you were, leave as you are become most unbecoming in the small print. [But where is the plagiarism especially apparent/proven? This/here? No. This/here? No. How about this/here, then? Perhaps]. A wholly non-ironic revival of the classic melodrama rediscovers the sincerity & powerful emotion of the heart. Dawns are heartbreaking, dusks less so since they signal the barky night. I’m not well, I almost never dream. Nowhere to run to baby, nowhere to hide. Ah, quick, quick, quick. Strap me to a stretcher, get me on a drip [I wanna be sedated].
Stan Rogal lives and writes in Toronto along with his artist partner Jacquie Jacobs and their pet jackabee. His work has appeared almost magically in numerous magazines and anthologies. The author of several books, plus a handful of chapbooks. Currently seeking a new publisher: anyone??? Co-founder of Bald Ego Theatre and former coordinator of the popular Idler Pub Reading Series.