Lou Reed (and Nico) have been very kind to me. I saw him way back in the Trauma in Philadelphia -- which occasioned this wonderful poem.
Deportee
In 68 I was still old.
"Who's that Old Spade?" they'd say.
When I was digging the Velvet Underground.
But Nico never nibbled on their ear
and worried if she was a real good singer.
"Fuck, yes, I said. But why
do you have that dyke drummer?
2nd Fret. Philly.
Arlo tried out "Alice's Restaurant" on me
in the backroom.
"Cut the mudfuk" I told him.
I told him.
"Do you know what the best word your
daddy ever wrote was?
Give me that guitar."
And I sang "Deportee."
This happened right before Bobby got killed.
Back when wars were really fucked up.
Who will remember me?
And then when Rin Tin Tin was dictating his final poem to me Lou Reed came up again.
I Died In New York
I died in New York
At the shelter in Brighton beach.
My last silence.
I thought of Pound at Rapallo in the last years.
Silence. He didn't speak to anyone.
He too had been in a cage.
Like him I wrote and wrote
It was all I had left.
1,673 pages of my life.
And this is how it ends.
The guy gave me part of his pastrami sandwich.
I had Lou Reed's number.
I had Woody's.
But I didn't ask the guy to call.
"Come, kindly death," I wrote.
Not without irony..it's a line I never got to say.
The kind of line that went to others.
I acted with my body one arf one twitch of the tail
and you knew what it meant to be with the 7th at Little Big Horn your little boy dead beside you with a hole in his neck and the bright blood and the blue sky above and
the
red
Indian
yowling and you running to tell someone, tell Custer
tear his throat out for he brought you to this
and then they'd say "CUT" and I would have a smoke and mess around with my stand-in and tell Jew jokes and then
I
WAS
ON
but I never even began to be what I was
Never
Never
Never
and yes I could have been Lear.
Oh you are men of stone!
But I said not a word.
It's cold with the breeze from the beach.
I was in Brighton Beach
I was dying.
At Sardi's in 57 I think with Capote I told him
everything Hollygolightly and he took it and
changed the name to Tiffanys just because no-one
would believe a dog could be so tender and gay...
But I loved the movie.
It was cold in Brighton Beach
The guy also gave me some knishes.
All of it lost. I should have been kinder.
At night I howled.
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