Goin Nowhere
I dig nowhere
It’s Nowhere
Nowhere man
Sitting in nowhere
Land making plans for
Nobody.
A unremarkable man
Without a plan
Steppin on cracks,
Clueless, broken down
Hungrey, horney,
Freaked n a rainy night in
London Town, he, Henry
Lost in the Whitehorse Bar
Downs 24 rye bourbons
Dying in place
Like Dylan Thomas.
My old man, Henshaw a junk and my ma, Golda sells pussy for junk.
I raised raise myself, cleaned myself, fed myself, got myself myself outta bed in morning to go to school no matta what the weather
Only 6 years old, day after day at 7am, gettin on number 153, the green city bus, alone, shaken, a toothache, athlete’s foot itchin, burnin, smellin, goin to school; The deck is stacked against me.
By 8am I’m tucked into Washington Elementary. It feels safe,my first grade teacher is Miss Petunia, she smells good, I get a we-man hard-on at nap time when she bends over tucking me in.
Who knows where babies come? At 6 I thought,babies are made when a couple held one another tight.
I discover masterbation, in the tub I rub my small cock with soap, I cum in an instant, the stuff goes everywhere, it’s sticky, smelling like chlorine.
I’m laying the sofa with the radio on, listen too Burl Ives singin Big Rock Candy Mountain,I’m hungry, Golda says to me,
Henry I found cum on the bathroom floor,
I says to her;
fuck off Golda, she’s junk sick, she falls down, hittin her head on the tub.
No telephone, no 911, I put a towel on her head, watching her bleed out, happy she’s gone. Next up, my old man Henshaw, junks have short lifespans, unless your William Burroughs or Keith Richards.
On the green bus by 7am tucked safely in Washington Elementary by 8.
In class we sing the National Anthem, I do a Nazi salute, Petunia escorts me vice principle’s office, the Vice is hot, I sit across from her looking up her skirt, her legs are open,I can see her bush, she says,
Henry, our forefathers gave their lives to defeat Hitler,
yes mum, let me go, I’m sorry;
She bends to hug me, she’s sweaty, I love her heat, I’m hard, all 5 inches.
I get off the green bus at Howard Street, walking some, going to a ice cream shop water, ordering water, the waiter says,
young man you have to order or leave.
I go.
Golda is dead,I don’t want to go home so I go to the park a girl from class is there, Esther, she’s beautiful I sit next to her on a bench, we kiss instantly, she says,
lay down with me on the grass, lets see how far we can go Henry.
We fall asleep waking at 730 pm, we’re naked, I’m on top clueless, she puts my penis inside her, I cum in a few seconds, Esther gets pissed, we try again.
This time we’re fucking like pros, adult like, discovering different positions as we go along.
I cum inside Esther, she screams, a cop appears asking,
what are you kids doing naked in the park?
It’s closed you know, and your naked,
violation of Statue 388.
Come to the station, he drives us to Howard Street Outpost.
We drink cokes and Officer Dooley as he is knowns tells us,
kids, I’m too lazy to do the paperwork, nobody would believe it anyway.
He gives us a couple of bucks and we take Green buses home.
6 years later I’m a freshman at Evanston Highschool, I take the green bus there everday.
I’m a unknown, I like it that way.
By my junior year I discover Literature, Whitman, Ezra Pound, Raymond Carver, John Cheevers, Kerouac, William Carlos Williams, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Kerouac writes about pot in On the Road, they call it tea, I want to get high like the Beat.
I walk Howard Street, I see a black guy, he’s either a pimp or a pusher, I say,
broh? You got marijuana,
sure a palm full 5 bucks, it's wrapped in newspaper.
I run home full of hope, it’s gonna be a new day.
Home, I pack my old man’s corn cob pipe, lighting it with a Zippo, taking deep drags, coughing, finally able to hold some down.
I lay on the sofa, turning the radio on, WLS Chicago listing to
George Haley, Elvis, Chuck Berry, The Everly Brothers,
Music has never sounded this good.
I lay face up on the sofa, I go into a trance the ceiling swells ballon-like, opening, I soul travel, the sky opens into a endless stream of color I get lost in it.
I wake up, my life has changed.
Today I’m 23 years old, I teach Native American history at the Pinecrest Indian Reservation, go to pow wows, pass the pipe.
I’m invisible to the White world, wondering what’s next.
I like to look at people, young people, poor people. I imagine what they do in their one-room place after work. Surely they get high on dope, ganja maybe or speed; cheap dope. They watch local TV with their old ladies fucking around during commercials.
At night, they go out and eat noodles with bits of spongy beef, shredded onions, and holy basil, 2 dollars a bowl.
The workers stroll to the Gypsy camp on the river; the Romani boil large pots over a fire, cooking rabbit, wild bird, carrots, and potatoes seasoned with fresh ginger, chili pepper, garlic, and salt.
Bowls of food for all, big bellies dancing into the wee hours, falling in place, waking up, going to mundane jobs: Car washes, kitchen work, street cleaning.
They have no insurance, when sick they go to county hospitals queuing for hours.
They are slammed from above by their employers, rapped, under pressure for money, sweating blood.
Tyson Chicken and a slaughterhouse open in town. Jessie and his wife, Linda, get a job at the slaughterhouse; she’s a cutter and he unloads frozen sides of beef from the freezer trucks.
The couple takes a bus to the slaughterhouse, they fill out paperwork and Linda asks,
where is the slaughterhouse?
the boss says follow the trails of blood honey.
Linda works as a cleaner hosing down and sweeping up bits up scrap meat saving the choicer bits and saving them.
Jessie is wearing rubber slippers he carefully walks in the freezer truck and slings a quarter of beef over his shoulder, his back coils but he knows he must keep going.
They are paid after work, and they go to their one-room place, Linda makes stew with bits of meat and potatoes, seasoning it with Romani seasoning. After eating they pass out on straw mats.
Weeks at work turn into months they rent a three room apartment. Linda’s pregnant.
Jessie works partime at a car wash; they buy a crib, washable diapers, and plastic baby bottles.
Let me interject here as the author; this story is hard going, I’m struggling, bare with me. I’d rather be writing a poem.
In August, Linda gives birth to a tiny baby, a girl, they name her May, she has curly blond hair, she’s a Leo.
Jessie buys a bag of shrooms at da pack home.
The lovers clean up good, put the baby to bed and slip outside to their 5 x 5 patio wrapped with a mossy tarp. They light candles and burn incense, turn on the radio, as they come on they listen to hard stuff, Blues, Rock, Soul, radio ZZKX.
The patio spirals upward, room and occupants flying past the clouds in the Heavens, flying with Angels, august, exalted, high and happy, in a spacecraft jetting into the future.
In the morning, they wake in the Gypsy camp the river is high, dancing, eating stew with the Romani, by 9 am they are at the slaughterhouse.
Linda works with mops, red with blood, Jessie slings frozen quarters of beef over his back, slips on a wet spot, hearing something crack on his upper back. He wakes up in Saint Matthew’s Hospital ward, there are fifteen men ; burn victims, sick junkies, and psychos.
Jessie is given a wheelchair and sent home paralysed from the waist down. Linda gives a Gypsy handyman a blow job to build a ramp at the front and back doors.
In the long hall, Jessie is fucked.
A paraplegic friend, Jimmy Glynn, was stationed in the Army Signal Corps in Bremen. While on leave he went on holiday, getting wasted on the Autobahn, drunk driving too fast in his Porsche, going off-road down a hill falling out of the car, feeling a crack in his upper back, later in an Army hospital, paralysed from the waist down; he told me this story about the VA hospital state side:
Some guys would drink all day, shoot dope, none of them made it home. I took care of myself, ate good, no booze, just ganja; it helped with leg tremors. I was one of the few guys to make it out of the place.
Jessie and Linda would make out, he would eat her pussy like a pro, but no hard ons that was tough for him.
He says home, Linda works at the slaughterhouse; he learns to maneuver in the house and take care of the baby, cook, clean house even. He lives ten more years, dying of bladder cancer cause by the tubes of his catheter rubbing on his bladder.
Lind finds another guy who can fuck her, she’s happy with that.