CLARK COOLIDGE & ALVIN CURRAN AT TAZZA IN PROVIDENCE MAY 3rd 2005

Alvin was smashing plates like a sedate Dadaist ringing bells & sending
waves of threatening sound from behind the raised lid of his laptop.

Clark was swaying his whole loose frame propped on the four fingers of
his left hand braced by a wedding ring.

Dressed in black –looking a bit like Bob Newhart – maybe.

Alvin lets loose an electronic belly laugh.

The big tangerine lights of Tazza drop down from the ceiling.

Providence suspends itself outside the plate-glass windows.

Foghorns blare what else
Some boat arrives
from Poland
with sailors
out on the town
for the night

Alvin Curran looks a little like Robert Creeley
a long time ago

now he's in his kitchen
with all his mixers on

"Who be this we," says Clark
I think
& Alvin starts to do something
I don't know the name of
but it makes him laugh

Clark says "we ate too much
& went to the bathroom
only on Wednesdays"

& Alvin throws back his head & laughs
now he's shaking & twisting the keyboards
& Clark's head nods loosely
also his shoulders
& the whole loose set of him
in huge rimless glasses
& bony black
his left hand
drilled straight down to his book
pulling the stuff up

"Providence has 9 things for every 8," he says.
"Providence
did you have to take
that guy's
trombone?"

Clark has a long talk with Providence.
Providence keeps walking by.

Alvin & Clark are eddies of leaves
gusting in Kennedy Plaza

"the colleges on the hill
the belfry
flush
with stinky organisms"

More plate-smashing from Alvin, serious collision,
very bad noise
I'm hoping William Gillespie is here to record this
& he is

Hollywood interlude
"Professor Providence"
"I take 6,000 steps
then some –
now where's my home?"

A small crowd gathers outside
the plate glass windows
laughing –
Hey this is better than the blizzard
the night I read
& that was wild

Alvin is a hoodlum
in the kitchen, in the subway,
in the lighting box,
smashing

Clark is not short of words
& handles like a man who could talk
for a very long time
pleasantly
then go on
to something else
he enjoys

He props his large frame
on those four straight fingers again
braced by a wedding ring

This is good
I don't know why
I think because it's not bad –
there's pretty much nothing bad about it
although everything Clark & Alvin are doing
has tremendous potential for bad
but they keep missing it
effortlessly

Ro—Die—Lan
This is for you

Alvin is growling
He's still smiling

"Providence ties mudflaps
on over its bottle caps"

Woonsocket
Seekonk
Cranston
Pawtucket—
where all philosophers live
in ignominy

"Nobody would go
near the
downtown
until the
slingshot was perfect"

I wish Able were here.

Alvin got a funky thing going
for about 4 seconds

A woman's having an orgasm now
in Alvin's corner

Some bird's trilling
a couple of people leaving
then church music

A guy on crutches
with one bent knee (the right)
just like in the movies
heaves himself quickly down
the street across the street

"I shudder at your bloody clang (?)"
&
"The real heart of Providence is a penitentiary,"
Clark says
& Mike Gizzi takes a turn
Hollywood again
Alvin blasts the harmonica
"What would your name be
if it didn't come out of
your wallet?" asks Clark.
"Susquehanna," says Mike.

What is it
about Providence
that makes us all Providence nuts --
It's so ordinary your heart breaks.
But I think it's really the skies

(later Mike Gizzi says "criminals")

Clark turns the pages with some vehemence now.
But he goes on.

& the vermilion lights are hanging
in the street outside
now too.

That awful
oppression of
poetry reading
is missing
for me
I'm all set to
look around
"What's one pigeon
more or less
anyway?"

I don't feel
that poetry
reading
hopelessness
even though this
has been
going on
a long time
we're still in Providence & everyone's comfortable
at least I am

a hand on my shoulder – Julia
leaving

this is *not* like Sartre's Huis Clos
right? Then
why am I thinking of it?

The end is in sight
surely
Clark leafing through pages silently
wherever he lands sounds good
he's a little Monty Python
as well as the Newhart thing
he says
schmoozing
enjoying that sound
Everything he says is reasonable
like everything Gertrude Stein says
is correct

My students with charcoal hands

Providence a projection outside

Mike Gizzi back at the mike—
Mike Magee not Mike enough
Or what?

There are a lot of notes.
The string is slack.

Clarke is a radio guy
A stagey sort of radio guy

There's whistling, very pure
& Clark goes on probing
the city with his book
a city in itself
& Alvin has a machine
for crushing cardboard boxes
full of tin cans & bottles
& bells & whistles
the crowd has thinned elegantly
"Your own dawn chorus has come back"

My ears hear just got glasses
Everything has that rainwater shine

I wouldn't have missed this for the world
"Those chosen were the days"