“Sure, if just for a minute, but you get around, right, so you’ve any idea why there are so many derelicts, panhandlers and crazies on the street tonight?”
“I believe it’s every day; they’ve let them all out. But if you’re concerned about them, you’ll be concerned about this.” She gives me a pamphlet. I look at it, say “I broke my glasses before so I’ll have to get to it later,” fold it to put away, she opens it in my hand and says “I neglected to mention,” and points to the price on the cover. “My eyes again,” and I give her a quarter, she already has out my dime change, I say “Really, I’m sure it’ll go to a good cause,” she says “We’re taught to get what we’re paid for too,” I say “Truth is I can probably use the dime for a call later on,” and put it into my pocket and she says “Good, already you’re rewarded and I am by your having been. But as an added reward to us both, promise you’ll read the cover article which continues on pages nine and twelve. It’s a warning, from God Almighty, and is perfectly written, no zigzaggy ideas, and ministers to all, rich or poor, sick or well. If there are any questions about it or life that trouble you, there’s a telephone hotline which you can use anytime of the day with your dime, or night”—she turns the pamphlet over and points to the number and address—“and this center to come to for a twice-daily meeting of our society and a free hot lunch.”
“That’s very generous, but it seems — what is this word, ‘Brooklyn’?—a little out of my way.”
“If you need a ride, we’ve the Bible bus. Door to door, no fare and always a seat and a very congenial group of passengers aboard and nothing required inside the center but decorum.”
“Thanks again. I’ll think about it, really. Goodnight.” I put the pamphlet into my coat pocket and pull out of the same pocket the notebook and from my pants my pen. It’s just, well, more accurate vernacular and suitable for that section of his poem: “That’s true that the universe or burst goes slow while we trump and rump along so fast, but aren’t we all or almost trying to make up or do for our own undivined lust time? Oh Hasenai, paltry maker of mephitic fishy poems when you would rather be or could like your dada or older breaders who trained you a rather rich unsolipsistic baker of fish-filled bisquits and pungent buns, crucify those last lines,” though I don’t know about the additional rhymed links or any of them in that linkage of lines. Not in the original for sure. Change it. Keep it. Rearrange it. “Thanks you very much,” the woman says to another man she stopped when he let the pamphlet she gave him fall out of his hand, and she picks it up, blows on it and goes. Just think about it then but jot it down now so you don’t forget and send Jun an aerogram asking if all these liberties with his work will be all right. But he’s already said in a recent Christmas card something like “Do your damndest bestest, Misty Dan, and then some and once more again my favoritest friend who isn’t a fabulist or Japanese, and then any way you sayest dost goes, even to the deez and doze. Hey, I play with your linguini also but not too well, so what about that Joe? And here convey big season’s greetings much too early I know, but Christmas has become a temporal event in Japan also and the post lines in the ensuing weeks are the one lines I want to avoid.”
I write in the notebook “That’s so for that’s true in Last One in is Out, Jun the Souring Shout — Let’s Croak, antepen stanz, and call mom, see and be with her too, and don’t just says, damn yous, dooz!”
