Notes

Professor Blowgun the stone drudge from the academy of weights & measures–where begrudgery is a way of life–accuses me of kidnapping my songs & leaving my fingerprints on somebody else's crimes–"a kid in East Orange wrote the words & you ripped-off the tune from 'the carrion crow'"–& sells this to newsweek with the secret identity of the cowboy poet where I got my name which started out to be Kanezervitz & how I oughta render unto Caeser where royalty is due–but all songs lead back to the sea & don't get scared but the clothesline people come back at night–so rally round all you prosecutin attorneys–

in a torpor like a tar pit the melted records revolve in the Encantada Lounge on the narrow stretch of No Man's land between the railroad tracks & the ragged sea cliffs–Gummy Mr Hyde runs the all night shooting gallery on the fifth floor of the ramshackle digs he threw up with Ramundo the Skunk after they were castaways from the prison ship trawler that sank off the coast…the weary denizens of the Train Trestle Hotel trade cats-eyes from the riverbed for glasses of the green fairy at the make-shift bar where Flaminga lights small fires in the ashtray to get things started–"in my country I was a great torch singer," she boasts to the newcomers with almost a flicker of hope…meanwhile the residents of the Milky Way model homes on the ridge above outfit Bucky Farque with a watch shaped like a noose–he's the new policechief supposed to do something about those people down there who scrawl punctuation marks across the War Memorial town clock & leave op-art sleeping bags in the boat house–Mrs Coldcream the chairwoman speaks to the first families over tea biscuits & gin & says she's gonna root out licentiousness & protect her intellectual property–"it all began when those pickers' shacks went up down by the tank farm,"–she thinks she put her finger on it…meanwhile the flatbeds roll up with the rides at the circus grounds near the beach–Dr Faustus shows the roustabouts where he wants his tent & tells them hands-off Mortado the Human Fountain if they need a drink just ask him–Cripple Pills the ringleader who used to play clarinet reminds the good st. doc, "Mr Mephistopheles says you stole his act,"–"STOLE HIS ACT?! why he'd be lucky to be running a shell game in Dinkytown!"–Mephistopheles is doing the geek routine this tour…Judge Chester Mounds is considering a run for high office & has his iron gate shaped into a confident smile to keep up his front & has his donkeys undermine the moorings below the Encantada Lounge–"out of sight, out of mind," remarks Lucien Swig his understudy at the dinner theater where they're doing "Les Mis" this summer…Gummy considers himself something of a damned poet & burns his prose poems of delirium & squalor right after he writes them–"the wind from the coastal train at midnight blows the embers up to Beulahland to outshine the stars"…the Skunk is sick of this & says "ah told ya 'bout them marbles" & threatens to douse his works in flame retardent if he don't stop making such a spectacle of himself in front of Ahmed who's painting his boots & the Fallen Angels on the nod–he's cooking up a scheme to get the well-to-do into the gallery & charge a few clams to hear the lightbulbs make that popcorn sound when the ferris wheel rolls into the surf & thinks Gummy's poems might be worth something if he'd only drop the dramaturgy down a hair

winds up in a montage of music & mimicry aimed at excavation–the multicolored proboscis that opened a passage for Frank & for Tiny Tim & all the rest of the sideshow crowd…e.e.cummings' typewriter with recording tape for a ribbon playing ecstatic eruptions in the long grass on Aquidneck Island–with Robert Mitchum dressed up as the Pope rolling a smoke–demanding roof-removal from subterranean sepia cafes & from your house–an American Gothic along the jet-pilot fly-over to Ho Chi Minh City…the spectral hitchhiker soaking a harmonica to get that holy slow train whistle sound & wearing Vivaldi's green velvet jacket second-hand & drawing in a yellow notebook holding the half-remembered vespers against the metallic air & grotesque clouds of extinction…a badluck Childe ballad sung in the golden reeds of aspiring youth