Junkman's Obbligato by Lawrence Ferlinghetti | ||||||||||
Let's go Come on Let's go Empty out our pokets and disappear. Missing all our apointments and turning up unshaven years later old cigarette papers stuck to our pants leaves in our hair. Let us not worry about the payments anymore. Let them come and take it away whater it was And us with it. Let us arise and go now to where dogs do it Over the Hill where they keep the earth quakes behind the city dumps lost among gasmains and garbage. Let us see the City Dumps for what they are. My counrty tears of thee. Let us disappear in automobile graveyards and reappear years later picking rags and newspapers drying our drawrs on garbage fires patches on our ass. Do not bother to say goodbye to anyone. Your missus will not miss us. Let's go smelling of sterno where the benches are filled with discarded Bowling Green statues in the interior dark night of the flowery bowery our eyes watery with the contemplation of empty bottles of muscatel. Let us recite from broken bibles on streetcorners Follow dogs on docks Speak wild songs Throw stones Say anything Blink at the sun and scratch and stumble into silence Diddle in dorways Know whores thirdhand after everone else in finished Stagger befuddled into East River sunsets Sleep in phone booths Puke in pawnshops Wailing for a winter overcoat. Let us arise and go now under the city where ashcans roll and reappear in putrid clothes as the uncrownd underground kings of the subway men's rooms. Let us feed the pigeons at the City Hall urging them to do their duty in the Mayor's office. Hurry up please it's time The end is coming. Flash floods Disasters in the sun Dogs unleashed Sister in the street her brassiere backwards. Let us arise and go now into the interior dark night of the soul's still bowery and find ourselves anew where subways stall and wait under the River. Cross over into puzzlement. South Ferry will not run forever. They are cutting out the Bay ferries but it is still not to late to get lost in Oakland. Washington has not yet toppled from his horse. There is still time to goose him and go leaving our income tax form behind and our waterproof wristwatch with it staggering blind after alley cats under Brooklyn's Bridge blown statues in baggy pants our tincan cries and garbage voices trailing. Junke for sale! Let's cut out let's go into the real interior of the country where hockshops reign mere unblind anarchy upon us. The end is here but golf goes on at Burning Tree. It's raining it's pouring The Ole man is snooring. Another flood is coming though not the kind you think. There is still time to sink and think. I wish to decend in society. I wish to make like free. Swing low sweet chariot. Let us not wait for the cadillacs to carry us triumphant into the interior waving at the natives like roman senators in the provinces wearing poet's laurels on lighted brows. Let us not wait for the write-up on page one of the New Yourk Times Book Review images of insane success smiling from the photo. By the time they print your picture in Life Magazine you will have become a negative anyway a print with a glosy finish. They will have come and gotten you to be famous and you still will not be free. Goodbye I'm going. I'm selling everything and giving away the rest to the Good Will Industries. It will be dark out there with the Salvation Army Band. And the mind its own illumination. Goodbye i'm walking out on the whole scene. close down the joint. The system is all loused up. Rome was never like this. I'm tired of waiting for Godot. I am going where the turtles win I am going where conmen puke and die Down the sad esplanades of the official world. Junk for sale! My country tears of thee. Let us go then you and I leaving our neckties behind on lampposts Take up the full beard of walking anarchy looking like Walt Whitman a homemade bomb in the poket. I wish to decend in the social scale. High scociety is low society. I am a social climber climbing downward And the descent is difficult. The Upper Middle Clas Ideal is for the birds but the birds have no use for it Having their own kind of pecking order based upon birdsong. Pigeons on the grass alas. Let us arise and go now to the Isle of Manisfree. Let loose the hogs of peace. Hurry up please it's time. Let us arise and go now into the interior of Foster's Cafeteria. So long Emily Post. so long Lowell Thomas. Goodbye Broadway Goodby Herald Squair. Turn it off. Confound the system. Cancel all our leases. Lose the War without killing anybody. Let horses scream and ladies run to flushless powderrooms. The end has just begun. I want to announce it. Run don't walk to the nearest exit. The real earthquake is coming. I can feel the building shake. I am the refined type. I cannot stand it. I am going where asses lie down with customs collectors who call themselves literary critics. My tool is dusty. My body hung up too long in strange suspenders. Get me a bright bandana for a jockstrap. Turn loose and we'll be off where sports cars collapse and the world begins again. Hurry up please it's time. It's time and half and there's the rub. The thinkpad makes homboys of us all. Let us cry out into stray eternity. Somewhere the fields are full of larks. Somewhere the land is swinging. My country 'tis of thee I'm singing. Let us arise and go now to the Isle of Manisfree and live the true blue simple life of wisdom and wonderment where all things grow stright up aslant and singing in the yellow sun poppies out of cowpods thinking angels out of turds. I must arise and go now to the Isle of Manisfree way up behind the broken words and woods of Arcady. |
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Lawrence Ferlinghetti | ||||||||||