Historical Disquisitions
Hello, hello, what to tell you was
The world's invisible
You see only yourself, that's not the world
although you are of it
Are you there
hello
why do you have your head in a sack?
a roony-bomb dream tank?
Why you got a banana in your ear?
You where?
Brown eyes they see blue sky
The world imagines you
Figure it's a planet
You hear?
an obscure star in the middle
Once you were pleasure-milk and egg
Were you there
Now you are eggs of milk between your legs
Are you there
“I am situated somewhere near the rim of a fairly large galaxy
which is one of a group of same & outside of which a
considerable number take their way at incredible speeds &
apparently in the opposite direction...”
You are a wish to squirt pleasantly
You want a lot of things & they are nice & you imagine
They are you and therefore you are nice
You are a wish to be here
Wishing yourself
elsewhere
“Hello. Try to talk some sense even if you
don't think any
It is history
(your mistake: “History WAS”)
now
*
History an explanation of why I deserve what I take
*
History an explanation of why I get what I deserve
*
(Through more or less clenched teeth):
“How can you sit there & look at the faces
you see in Montgomery Street wiped blank
from selling whatever brains they got faces
in 3rd Street blank from facing a lathe all day
& TV all night African tromped-on faces Asiatic
hunger faces Washington war-masks & smile at me
about how after all this is a Moral Universe
gives me the screaming jumping meemies I thought
you were bright enough had enough work-experience
yourself to have some faint idea of...”
*
hello.
“THE WIND RATTLES THE WINDOW I CAN'T
SLEEP FRIDAY NIGHT IS VERY LARGE IN SAN
FRANCISCO THE LOWER CLASSES GET PAID ON
FRIDAY & GET ON THEIR WAY TO SPEND IT IN
UPPER-MIDDLE-CLASS CLIPJOINTS THEY CLAIM
AREN'T TOURIST TRAPS THE UPPER CLASSES ARE
LUSHED OUT OF THEIR HEADS DOWN IN PEBBLE
BEACH SUCKING EACH OTHER'S & WILL SKIP THE
SHRINKER MONDAY HE'S GAY HIMSELF THE
SILLY SON OF A BITCH AS LONG AS I'M NOT OUT
HUSTLING SAILORS ON MARKET STREET & ONLY
WHEN I'M LUSHED OUT ON MY OWN PREMISES
(FOR WHICH I PAY EXCESSIVELY HIGH TAXES)
I DON'T CARE”
“The middle classes the middle class is mainly from out of
town (that's what I like about San Francisco everybody's either
up or down) they come & look at us they go away puzzled where
they remain,
outclassed...
(they will fight the Rooshuns &c.
they will fight the gooks & wogs & chinks &
japs & niggers & commies & catholics & wall
street & any man that tries to tell them
different...)”
“The upper class don't bother me a bit except
why do they let themselves be buffaloed into
hiring the creepy managers they do? Faceless men to
represent a legal fiction? The upper
well, the...”
“UPPER CLASSES ARE HARMLESSLY IMBE-
CILE THE CLASSES PRETEND NOT TO EXIST (&
VERY NEARLY CAN'T, OUTSIDE OF JAIL) THE MIDDLE
CLASS MANAGER MERCHANT BANKER PROFESSIONAL
PROFESSIONAL THE SOLID (IT'S THE CHEESE THAT
MAKES IT BINDING) CALVINISTFREUDIAN DEMOC-
RACY SWELLS
& B L O S S O M S ! ”
TERMINAL LUES ACROSS THE SHOULDERS
OF THE WORLD
“The Roman Empire went to hell when the Romans bought them-
selves a goon-squad; bankrupted themselves trying to enforce moral
and sumptuary laws...”
History's now
Philip Whalen, “Historical Disquisitions” from The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen copyright © 2007 by Brandeis University Press and reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press. www.wesleyan.edu/wespress
Source:
The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen
(Wesleyan University Press, 2007)