How Not to Die

September means the end of all the lovely long, hot sunny days with time to read and travel. Roadside weeds are already starting to turn yellow and brown because it's almost time for them to die.

I don't want anything to die. Everybody going around saying how much they love autumn makes me feel contrary. "Just write on your forehead," I think, "I love signs of impending death."

When you're feeling contrary is a good time to read a Gregory Corso poem, like this one:

How Not to Die

Around people
if I feel I'm gonna die
I excuse myself
telling them "I gotta go!"
"Go where?" they wanna know
I don't answer
I just get outa there
away from them
because somehow
they sense something wrong
and never know what to do
it scares them such suddenness
How awful
to just sit there
and they asking:
"Are you okay?"
"Can we get you something?"
"Want to lie down?"
Ye Gods! people!
Who wants to die amongst people?!
Especially when they can't do shit
To the movies--to the movies
that's where I hurry to
when I feel I'm going to die
So far it's worked

I've been spending my evenings with a bunch of people, and they can't do shit, although it's my job to teach them some. And after that I like to retreat to the movies--the ones in my own basement, where a feature doesn't have to take more than about twenty minutes and it begins with the same images every time, the "Rev, Rev, Dancealution" machine making me smile inwardly, quietly, to myself.

Marriage

We had a whirlwind weekend at Non-Necromancy headquarters. There were houseguests I would have liked to have seen more of. There were parties I didn't have the energy to attend. Walker and I spent all day Saturday and then all day Sunday at his end-of-the-season soccer tournament an hour and fifteen minutes away. Today we're exhausted and all the fun is over, the houseguests already gone, nothing left but candy wrappers and dirty dishes.

I've been planning tomorrow's classes and not feeling inspired to my usual level of hilarity for talking about Oliver Goldsmith's play She Stoops to Conquer. So I decided we'd talk about courtship rituals and I'd read Gregory Corso's poem on the subject, Marriage, out loud. (If I ever decide to vlog, reading you a poem like this will be the reason):

Should I get married? Should I be good?
Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustus hood?
Don't take her to movies but to cemeteries
tell all about werewolf bathtubs and forked clarinets
then desire her and kiss her and all the preliminaries
and she going just so far and I understanding why
not getting angry saying You must feel! It's beautiful to feel!
Instead take her in my arms lean against an old crooked tombstone
and woo her the entire night the constellations in the sky-

When she introduces me to her parents
back straightened, hair finally combed, strangled by a tie,
should I sit with my knees together on their 3rd degree sofa
and not ask Where's the bathroom?
How else to feel other than I am,
often thinking Flash Gordon soap-
O how terrible it must be for a young man
seated before a family and the family thinking
We never saw him before! He wants our Mary Lou!
After tea and homemade cookies they ask What do you do for a living?

Should I tell them? Would they like me then?
Say All right get married, we're losing a daughter
but we're gaining a son-
And should I then ask Where's the bathroom?

O God, and the wedding! All her family and her friends
and only a handful of mine all scroungy and bearded
just wait to get at the drinks and food-
And the priest! he looking at me as if I masturbated
asking me Do you take this woman for your lawful wedded wife?
And I trembling what to say say Pie Glue!
I kiss the bride all those corny men slapping me on the back
She's all yours, boy! Ha-ha-ha!
And in their eyes you could see some obscene honeymoon going on-
Then all that absurd rice and clanky cans and shoes
Niagara Falls! Hordes of us! Husbands! Wives! Flowers! Chocolates!
All streaming into cozy hotels
All going to do the same thing tonight
The indifferent clerk he knowing what was going to happen
The lobby zombies they knowing what
The whistling elevator man he knowing
Everybody knowing! I'd almost be inclined not to do anything!
Stay up all night! Stare that hotel clerk in the eye!
Screaming: I deny honeymoon! I deny honeymoon!
running rampant into those almost climactic suites
yelling Radio belly! Cat shovel!
O I'd live in Niagara forever! in a dark cave beneath the Falls
I'd sit there the Mad Honeymooner
devising ways to break marriages, a scourge of bigamy
a saint of divorce-

But I should get married I should be good
How nice it'd be to come home to her
and sit by the fireplace and she in the kitchen
aproned young and lovely wanting my baby
and so happy about me she burns the roast beef
and comes crying to me and I get up from my big papa chair
saying Christmas teeth! Radiant brains! Apple deaf!
God what a husband I'd make! Yes, I should get married!
So much to do! Like sneaking into Mr Jones' house late at night
and cover his golf clubs with 1920 Norwegian books
Like hanging a picture of Rimbaud on the lawnmower
like pasting Tannu Tuva postage stamps all over the picket fence
like when Mrs Kindhead comes to collect for the Community Chest
grab her and tell her There are unfavorable omens in the sky!
And when the mayor comes to get my vote tell him
When are you going to stop people killing whales!
And when the milkman comes leave him a note in the bottle
Penguin dust, bring me penguin dust, I want penguin dust-

Yes if I should get married and it's Connecticut and snow
and she gives birth to a child and I am sleepless, worn,
up for nights, head bowed against a quiet window, the past behind me,
finding myself in the most common of situations a trembling man
knowledged with responsibility not twig-smear nor Roman coin soup-
O what would that be like!
Surely I'd give it for a nipple a rubber Tacitus
For a rattle a bag of broken Bach records
Tack Della Francesca all over its crib
Sew the Greek alphabet on its bib
And build for its playpen a roofless Parthenon

No, I doubt I'd be that kind of father
Not rural not snow no quiet window
but hot smelly tight New York City
seven flights up, roaches and rats in the walls
a fat Reichian wife screeching over potatoes Get a job!
And five nose running brats in love with Batman
And the neighbors all toothless and dry haired
like those hag masses of the 18th century
all wanting to come in and watch TV
The landlord wants his rent
Grocery store Blue Cross Gas & Electric Knights of Columbus
impossible to lie back and dream Telephone snow, ghost parking-
No! I should not get married! I should never get married!
But-imagine if I were married to a beautiful sophisticated woman
tall and pale wearing an elegant black dress and long black gloves
holding a cigarette holder in one hand and a highball in the other
and we lived high up in a penthouse with a huge window
from which we could see all of New York and even farther on clearer days
No, can't imagine myself married to that pleasant prison dream-

O but what about love? I forget love
not that I am incapable of love
It's just that I see love as odd as wearing shoes-
I never wanted to marry a girl who was like my mother
And Ingrid Bergman was always impossible
And there's maybe a girl now but she's already married
And I don't like men and-
But there's got to be somebody!
Because what if I'm 60 years old and not married,
all alone in a furnished room with pee stains on my underwear
and everybody else is married! All the universe married but me!

Ah, yet well I know that were a woman possible as I am possible
then marriage would be possible-
Like SHE in her lonely alien gaud waiting her Egyptian lover
so I wait-bereft of 2,000 years and the bath of life.

I do a very good performance of this poem, if I do say so myself, with the climactic line "I deny honeymoon!" delivered at the top of my very considerable voice. And I love the poem, love the idea of all these different possible lives, even though I got married relatively young and never worried too much about courtship roles or possible young married scenarios. Still, having visited Niagara Falls, I can imagine being a young person going into one of those hotel rooms and feeling the way the speaker does, here. And for years I have not felt my shopping lists to be complete if someone hasn't written in "penguin dust."

The American Way

I am a little bit reassured by today's report that the outside consultants who investigated whether the science teacher in the local public school system was teaching his peculiar brand of religion in the public schools have reported to the school board that "there is a significant amount of evidence that Mr. Freshwater's teachings regarding subjects related to evolution were not consistent with the curriculum of the Mount Vernon City Schools and state standards." Now the school board has to decide what to do about the man who would be a martyr. They're under intense pressure from Freshwater and Daubenmire's supporters, many of whom must have been educated in Freshwater's classroom.

What still disturbs me is that any child in our school system who claims to be "disturbed" by the teaching of evolution can go sit in the hall while it's being taught. (The same is true for kids who claim to be nauseated by dissecting a worm or a frog--they can go sit in the hall.) What's wrong with this picture?

This morning I was rereading Gregory Corso's poem "The American Way." Like most of his poems, it's very long and is best read out loud. Here's the section that caused me to look up the poem, after reading the newspaper:

2
They are frankensteining Christ in America
in their Sunday campaigns
They are putting the fear of Christ in America
under their tents in their Sunday campaigns
They are driving old ladies mad with Christ in America
They are televising the gift of healing and the fear of hell
in America under their tents in their Sunday
campaigns
They are leaving their tents and are bringing their Christ
to the stadiums of America in their Sunday
campaigns
They are asking for a full house an all get out
for their Christ in the stadiums of America
They are getting them in their Sunday and Saturday
campaigns
They are asking them to come forward and fall on their
knees
because they are all guilty and they are coming
forward
in guilt and are falling on their knees weeping their
guilt
begging to be saved O Lord O Lord in their Monday
Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday
and Sunday campaigns

Why is this poem reassuring? Because it was written in 1960, the year of my birth, and published the year after Nemerov's Boom! appeared. This stuff has been going on all my life.

My family just watched Inherit the Wind, with the recurring singing of "Gimme that old-time religion" on the soundtrack. We found it ironic how much the current situation in our small town resembles the situation of the small town during the Scopes Monkey Trial. It's discouraging to see how little some things have changed. We need to be singing some better songs. I dislike the one "patriotic" song that says something about being an American "where at least I know I'm free." At LEAST? I'd like to be able to say that my community is at least trying to educate middle-schoolers who can't tell the difference between a philosophic and a scientific theory, rather than allowing them to sit in the hallway and perpetuate that old-time ignorance. It isn't good enough for anyone.