Celebrating National Poetry Month

Before we go anywhere, a shoutout is in order for

Marcel Borgstijn

who puts out a terrific quarterly online magazine — Darkrooms (see below). It’s terrific not because the latest issue (#3) showcases some of my NYC subway photos, but because many excellent photographers have been contributing to the magazine, and I feel lucky to be in their company.

Darkrooms Magazine issue #3 - Photostack edition

Okay, back to the subject at hand.

The first poem I read and understood in English was scribbled on the wall of a men’s room stall at H&S Hardware in Louisville, KY, where I started working as a sales clerk in August of 1980.

”Raise a pot lid when you piss,
Pee like a dad, not like a sis.”

I was so excited I understood every single word, inlcuidng the articles, that I seriously thought of making poetry be my meal ticket. If it weren’t for my grandmother, who convinced me that writing verse is for those who cannot get into medical school, I might have given it a serious whirl, notwithstanding my very limited vocabulary.

Later, I manged to convince her that people who can’t get into film school go to medical school; but that’s a longer poem for another time.

Today, I bring you a poem about New York, which I memorized, word for word, to impress Linn, a fellow student in my Theism, Atheism, and Existentialism class at NYU. I never mustered up the courage to recite it to her or even say hello, for that matter. But I still remember the poem. Many years later I discovered that she was a daughter of Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman, the filmmaker I idolized even back then. Life can be strangely unmerciful, especially in retrospect.

I doubt Allen Ginsberg would have liked his words interspersed with my photos.
But he’s with the wind and the rain now, and has other things to worry about.

My Sad Self

BY ALLEN GINSBERG

To Frank O’Hara

Sometimes when my eyes are red

I go up on top of the RCA Building

          and gaze at my world, Manhattan—

                     my buildings, streets I’ve done feats in,

                           lofts, beds, coldwater flats

—on Fifth Ave below which I also bear in mind,

          its ant cars, little yellow taxis, men

               walking the size of specks of wool—

   Panorama of the bridges, sunrise over Brooklyn machine,

          sun go down over New Jersey where I was born

             & Paterson where I played with ants—

   my later loves on 15th Street,

          my greater loves of Lower East Side,

             my once fabulous amours in the Bronx   

                                        faraway—

   paths crossing in these hidden streets,

      my history summed up, my absences   

             and ecstasies in Harlem—

      —sun shining down on all I own

       in one eyeblink to the horizon

               in my last eternity—

                                     matter is water.

Sad,

      I take the elevator and go

             down, pondering,

and walk on the pavements staring into all man’s

                                           plateglass, faces,

             questioning after who loves,

      and stop, bemused

             in front of an automobile shopwindow

      standing lost in calm thought,

             traffic moving up & down 5th Avenue blocks behind me   

                      waiting for a moment when ...

Time to go home & cook supper & listen to

                      the romantic war news on the radio   

                                     ... all movement stops

& I walk in the timeless sadness of existence,   

      tenderness flowing thru the buildings,

             my fingertips touching reality’s face,

      my own face streaked with tears in the mirror   

             of some window—at dusk—

                                     where I have no desire—

      for bonbons—or to own the dresses or Japanese   

                      lampshades of intellection—

Confused by the spectacle around me,

          Man struggling up the street

                     with packages, newspapers,

                                           ties, beautiful suits   

                     toward his desire

          Man, woman, streaming over the pavements   

                     red lights clocking hurried watches &   

                            movements at the curb—

And all these streets leading

          so crosswise, honking, lengthily,

                            by avenues

          stalked by high buildings or crusted into slums

                            thru such halting traffic

                                           screaming cars and engines   

so painfully to this

          countryside, this graveyard

                     this stillness

                                           on deathbed or mountain   

          once seen

                            never regained or desired

                                           in the mind to come

where all Manhattan that I’ve seen must disappear.

New York, October 1958