New and Selected Poems, 1957-2011

1950s / 1960s

99 1950s / 1960s Pre-med thinking he’s got to learn about the world all over again from square one Doesn’t think he knows anything for sure only the hula-hoops and Twinkies, the blues and violets of his mind very late at night red and pink lipstick case with a little mirror on one side, hat, stockings, garter belt and gloves He bought a shirt in 1950 the most remarkable feature of which is that a snag or tear will reduce it to nothing. It’s a shirt made of a single cell that, when it’s reduced to nothing, a single cell remains. The original cell of that fabric. What he is seeking is a quilt made up of the original cells of all the fabrics. 100 What the 1950s does like a blow to the back or side of one’s head it relocates your mind v v v ‘Delicious’ apples and the popularity of DDT James Dean Peter Lawford, Elizabeth Taylor, the Mickey Mouse Club taken seriously The time many people who came into their own in the 1960s first got laid The Rosenberg’s frying in the electric chair McCarthy and his crony Roy Cohn the atomic bomb already five years old Nixon: “California politics is a can of worms” Captain Kangaroo, Howdy Doody v v v 101 Inhaling The jazz was good Death was softened, advancements made in the salesmanship of everything His own deepest impulses were not to nurse or nurture but to hang out again at Sonny Berkowitz’ Pool Hall, wearing blue suede shoes, Levis and navy blue shirt. He bought a zip gun, joined a street gang Once, joint in hand, exploring the intricacies of the Chicago Drainage Canal, he entered a sewer and ambled deeply as he could reflecting all the while on his chances of surviving the synchronized flushing of three-and-a-half million toilets. For the first time in 2,000 years one went four years to a University without hearing one true word; going to work for Hallmark Greeting cards 102 or the phone company one knew something was at hand because things became easy. Tin-Pan alley people in college dormitories subscribing to Photoplay and The Nail Polish Review. Five foot two, eyes of blue, cotton candy hair fluffy lavender angora sweater short white socks with fat cuffs one of a hundred couples in a Champaign, Illinois dormitory lounge. Rock Hudson singing to Doris Day, “. . . beautiful girl, your eyes, your hair is beyond compare . . .” (Pillow Talk) “Touch me, touch me,” guiding his hand into her pleated wool skirt, ‘petting’ it was called, 103 one foot touching the floor at all times ejaculating somewhere or other somehow or other discreetly as possible love in the 1950s. He sees giant mushroom cloud father of the H-Bomb Edward Teller an entire island, Eniwetok, radioactive coral dust a gigantic cauliflower, blue and gray and mauve . . . five million tons of TNT Police Action Korea Harry Truman and Dwight David Eisenhower, each with six legs and arms dancing to the music of Lord Shiva and Judy Garland doing it on a pink velvet loveseat some twenty-five miles into the stratosphere, and spread a hundred miles across the sky. ...