Tarántula
Hostile black nite crash
on this abandoned roof or pagoda stool they place you & you hear voices saying things like ‘titen ‘m up Joe — keep ‘m titened up’ & then Orion looking evil & he wipes you off & keeps you clean & Familiar Face himself ‘i heard you been eating some eggs? any truth to that?’ & Orion licking his flesh & trouble in mind blues & shades of fire hydrants… YOU — the fire hydrant & Beau Geste, a fire hydrant — failures completely & walking to Gibraltar & trying to find your energy — get your kicks & shadow box your language… Faust from the garden — Emancipation Anne, who looks like a hungarian deer & Chump with a brain like an iceberg all imitating Africa… Dead Lover who hitchhikes & brags & says he’s going to Carthage & he keeps repeating ‘when i die’ but then his mind goes black & blue & methodist butter erupting & Twinkle Clown with arabic lettering on his forehead wanting everybody to experience his fright ‘you must experience my fright to be my friend!’ so says he to Lucy Tunia, whose vegetarian legs shine like mahogany & who comforts Twinkle Clown in his fits when he has no harem… Zing & Orion stutters & coughs & SHAZAMMM — the opium ghost neath the ferris wheel — on the side of the highway — where nobody can stop — where he can cause no trouble — where the show must go on… this is where He wishes to die He wishes to die in the midst of cathedral bells — He wishes to die when the tornadoes strike the roofs & stools ‘so much for death’ he will say when he dies
the newsboy comes in the back door
his big toe sticks thru his shoe — he
carries a piece of peeling with a
number on it — he makes a phone call
then he blows his nose