winter poem (for newsclippings and rowens)

[lewis taylor]

I got talking to a street performer once who noticed a copy of Algren's 'Wak on the Wild Side' in my bag. He told me that he himself was once an addict, and how every Tuesday he would get his methadone script, get loaded and for some reason the film of 'The Man with the Golden Arm' was nearly always on T.V. He said he fucking hated it haha. Anyway, the tea's been prepared which I guess means it's time for an edit...

PRELUDE

A Winter in Munich

for Rowen S and Newsclippings

An error occurred at my bank. It was xmas and none of the guys over there felt the need to fix it. … yet! So I, on my way to work, collected the cash, a two-months income for me, in order to waste it. You could say: I had a plan.
Moving on, I considered to not go to work, but instead take the train to Munich to bacchanalize my life. And my birthday was coming up soon, too. is this little back story part of the piece? Or is it a separate anecdote to contextualize the poem for us forum-heads? Either way, I quite like it. It's daring, amusing and somehow a little ominous too.

FUGUE IN THREE VOICES

Voice 1:

Close the doors, put out the light*

My bourgeois lamp dimmed down because of 'Bordeaux' in the second line, I'll let you get away with using 'bourgeois' in this line because at least your use of French is consistent. We studied Marx recently and after hearing/reading/saying/writing the word so many times it just pisses me off haha, but I digress, I do like how the piece opens. Only, why does the lamp dim?
while I sat on my Bordeaux cushion
drinking Blue Curaçao straight from
the pretty bottle I had bought as a
bad imitation of a soother for a lost boy. 'pretty bottle' works really well. Solid first stanza, I'm not sure about 'soother' but can't think of anything else

Landed at Munich's grand station
feeling more warm by then.
I strolled through Schillerstraße
(a Harlemized NYC 5th Avenue)
rented a bed at a hotel called:
Heimat. Home or better: at home. You're killing me, this stanza is great. I love trivial motion in poetry, very Frank O'Hara-esque. I may be a little partial given my own fond memories of Munich's grand station, but hey. Also, I assume if the last line was prose it would read 'Heimat, which means home, or better yet; at home.' If I'm wrong in saying that, then I'm wrong. If I'm right, it may only be on account of my ability to speak German (poorly), perhaps you could make it a little more comprehensible for all the non-German mono-linguistic scum, unless you're shooting for esoteric-ism.

Me, blue-blooded now, ventured into
the scene of horses and downers:
The H was good: I was Bowie for just these references are very cheeky, unless I'm looking to far into them. Bowie [heroes] for just one day? And Queen being, among the other meanings, reference to Bowie's colab with Freddie? How's my aim?
one day, needing a Queen to satisfy
my needs, and I found one queen bee
of the smack. She wanted to lay me and if you mean lay me as in sex and screw as in sex, I think it's best if you scrap one.
screw, but I: my brain needed the powder. very nice. the personal pronoun proceeded by 'my brain' seems to separate you as you from the dependent gears within you.

So, it took her about a million years
to apporting what was mine. All was apport or apporting?
mine because me, I paid for it. again, me and I, some may call it fault, I like it though.
Major league hit through my nose:
Next thing I know is: her exposing
her breasts, first to me and then to
the mirror, me recalling: I'd fuck myself
from the silence of the lambs, but I doubt
we made love because I blacked out. starts to get hectic and ends with a satirical subversion (sort of). It's cool, but I don't know about the silence of lambs thing.


I only remember, we stole magnum bottles
of champaign in order to sell them to a downtown
bar in order to get cash for horse of course.
It worked. Me feeling like a cultural anthropo-
logical field worker, getting too inclined. repetition of 'in order to,' to highlight the linear progress of it all? I get it, I think, but I'm not sure if I'm a huge fan of it.

In that same winter with a dark cloud for a sun,
covering what was wrong with me, my bourgeois
lamp dimmed down lowest. Aha! so here 'dimmed' is an adjective ("the red lamp/the dimmed lamp") is this how it was meant to be in the first stanza? Because the word 'while' in L2 suggests you've used 'dimmed' as a verb (i dimmed my lamp down/my lamp miraculously dimmed itself down).

sorry but I have an assignment to complete so I can't crit part 2 at the moment.
thoroughly enjoyable, Frank O'Hara meets William Burroughs without the trite-ness that each of them have from time to time. Vielen Dank