Established Marvel : a Monk by Abbreviation

30. GIMPELMAN THE DIMPLE:

Honus Wagner Billy Budd Uncle Sam and the Great Pretender the four of them together in a montage of faces over Times Square in a momentary neon blight of brightly lit image advertising a New York Travel campaign oddly enough composed of people who seem marginal to the city and even odder being directed at people already here or here enough to look up and be witness to what flashes by them but no one seems to notice anyway as I figure there must be someone nearby somewhere simply filming the sight in order to actually make the commercial that would then be beamed to those in other places like Oklahoma or Seattle or Chicago to ‘come visit the wonders of New York’ and all that or at least that’s what I think and where else but near the Great White Way as it was once called would anyone so voraciously consume junk culture and parade forth in falsified costumed images in order to make a point thousands upon thousands literally all those who pass in the course of a day visitors and sailors executives and salesmen theater-watchers and goers buyers and sellers actors and actresses on the move or on the make dancers painters singers singers of jingles the great faceless unknown people who staff the hotels and restaurants and theaters and palaces and places and museums which also are gobbled up by the rude commerce the rude glut of commerce which overtakes and eventually destroys everything here hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of flashing lightbulbs making pictures and light elements phasing in and out illuminating a roadway and street so dear as to be worth at least five thousand dollars a foot the tragic Gimpelman the dimple in the pastry the wayfaring stranger the struggling giant the wounded lover the bowing King the all-seeing I the studied and accumulated drafts of everything put forth here and here over and over and listed and cataloged and repeated for all to see and in whatever way men create their world so do they live it and without second-guessing there is no improvement or no recourse yet the lights will flash the lights remain the ever-encompassing phasar of all the energy that is just glows.

29. THE ‘LANCE CORPORAL’S WITNESS’ REPORT:

‘Save as nothing and regret even less take nothing from no one and answer to fewer’ these were the sorts of mottos pasted around the youngsters’ high faces on nearly every subway kiosk and stairway one can see amazing youth stupid youth the grand dialectic of time and space in constant revision and arguing back and forth over and anew with one another but one needs to ask the question about ‘do we really want to live this way?’ and then try to answer it but the only way to do so is by OBSERVATION strict as one can and there’s never really an answer because – face it – everything IS ! and what does one see but passing styles and regency regenerations and everything new is old again and try to learn from the past but don’t repeat it or however the motto would go IF it were presented gloriously by the same presenters and it’s always the army I see (watch that guy ramrod straight crew haircut walking tall and regimented like solid lace walking INTO his bank of choice) trying to run things by a stropism and a militarism of thought and attitude – they try to run LIFE as a military camp wherein nothing untoward can happen and only that which is preferred and pre-ordained occurs and that’s what you hear on the midnight morning news - happy faces smiling faces stupid faces dumbass faces EVERYTHING within bounds and far out of reach but even that guy walking along looks over everything stiffly and scans like an eagle the old world he sees BUT NOT for the adventure of creation or the joy of discovery but for the slow and sorry preservation of anything that already is (and since it’s changing constantly) always under revision and always in collective agreement with the ‘powers’ of the moment WELL THEN he’s really going nowhere fast ahead of his own curve and misleading himself into thinking of preservation while vanguarding a horrible constant change and ‘he would be the keeper of the flame and he would try to beat the shepherds back’ but nothing would occur in such a world except the static of the status-quo appropriated all by someone else and the notes from the Lance Corporal are written on the backs of his two hands but HE CAN’T READ and avoids all else ‘NO MORE CHEVROLETS nothing that must be kept cold no more sudden moves everything as of old’ (well there’s a maybe and ‘gimme an A’) – on the palms of their hands on the soles of their feet on the walls of their houses they wrote all their names in blue ink stained deep and just before dawn they disappeared and left the scene THEY ATE sweets until they were sick they fell asleep on the concrete floor and the next morning the newspapers it seemed all tried to make sense out of what had supposedly occurred but no one found a key reason for any of it and there didn’t anyway seem to be any reason or feeling to the excuses that were given (“as it turned out” he heard the newsman saying “the family had been under observation for three months for a variety of what were once called (under the old regime) ‘anti-social crimes’ but which would today and in our own society of course be passed over as nothing more than foolery and flippant individual freedoms yet of course there are still countries in which such offenses are considered serious in fact worthy of death and in this case it was just that summary sentencing and execution which had taken place as clan members and neighbors from the family’s home town massed and paraded to their very doorstep - and they each were taken out one at a time and beaten to death with sticks and pole-axe handles and the reaction in this country was horror and distaste as movements suddenly arose to question both WHY and for HOW LONG we as a nation are and shall be advancing such a society as this expending manpower firepower and great sums of money to promote such a state and PERHAPS that is the question of the day for it does merit some consideration” but then as I think about it I wonder what’s really the difference between what they do and what the militarism of thought does to us all IT’S ALL THE SAME in some lousy futuristic way and I think of the drunks passing out from fear or wonder and the small children with nowhere left to go and the small countries which have run out of coastline and the tall weird men who talk ceaselessly of black holes and random encounters and all the depths of their supposed ‘space’ and its science while they mill about holding martinis in withered hands and the corner Polish guy wiping down the tables (‘yes sir yes sir three bags full’ like a nursery rhyme from the netherland) and whatever it’s been has been a long time SEE SEE the black man outside of Birdland he staggers and shimmies and tries to get cash but nothing unlike him is heading his way accidental moments collect the same sort of guilt (‘and where are you now ? I’ve been waiting so long but no one has come and I’m sitting alone’) and everything is overdone and everything is locked and everything is regrets and malfeasance and timber-locks along some Utah border where they fell trees and go about killing bear and antelope and any other mammal which still lingers late (some PALEO MEXO PROTO whatever ZAIC they wish to call the past) for we live in overflow and lava fills the deck - and they all stared back at me but I couldn’t tell if I was smiling anymore OR EVEN IF I’D EVER SMILED AT THEM.

28. YOU COULD SAY:

And I remember other nights and days when things were a lot different and when the situation of my own life was very different too I remember the late night walks along Fifth Avenue along the streets of the 70’s the apartment building with its ill-faced modernism for its day wherein Charlie Parker died at 995 Fifth in like 1953 and the Frick Collection right nearby that vast and sordid looking old mansion athwart the street and set back behind its black grill fence and the grand masonry of its military like and low-slung granite walls and across from the street right there the huge strange statue in the park along the park’s rock wall too the tribute statue to WWI regimental local dead the monuments the benches and those flat dead broke and saddened tired sleeping upon the and the ill-gotten gains of the street when secret things were secret things the third floor room all painted hard in red and able to be seen from the street the woman or girl within it straightening things moving pictures around and pottery her figure just visible in the dimming light along the street and myself beleaguered and troubled and without so much wishing too somehow that I was up there acceptable and part of that other world but instead young broke and shattered going from spot to spot yet proclaiming a conqueror a city all my own every spot and step every brick and alley and the people would come up to me with their missionary foils and hand me leaflets and tracts and say ‘my son you are troubled and lost’ and I’d look back defiant and say ‘I am nothing of the sort but it’s for sure you are’ and they’d bless me and go on and did I miss them ? NO YOU COULD SAY I DID NOT!

27. CHRISTMAS IS BUT NEW NOISE:

Then something like anything else arose and it was soon everywhere and the city streets grew crowded with it and the hanging decorations came across as bothersome and maybe pretentious but they nonetheless hung from nearly everything - poles light fixtures streetside clock towers doorways and lobbies - everything was cloaked of a sudden in red and decorated to some tasteful hilt yet all for the sake of the SALE and Christmas seems to never come too late just always too early and all the people had lined up outside the department store windows as though from another older and more distant age when that sort of thing mattered and furs and pearls and long winter cloaks were all the rage as the carriages and paths led in every direction through the gently fallen snow and families and couples walked and children sledded noisily along wherever they could and some great huge ice-storm of a city and a time and place all put together grew into a froth of white and cold over cityscape landlocked Winter as people gawked at windows and figurines and poorly-lit chocolate shops stayed open late by flickering candle-light as people drew cocoa and kids chomped on candy and everywhere it seemed the season was in the air and good-will towards all was like a prayer in a shawl as goodness covered all of the land BUT never to stay too good for the world it all eventually withered away and left in its stead the broken paths of melted black snow where everywhere horses snorted and plopped their debris along path and side road and lane and lovers it was noted began suddenly to cry and depart and the wide broad dark cloud descended low over the city and space until everywhere it seemed all things all had begun to just disappear and a silence and sadness covered full the broad-spread land.