A friend of mine named Jimmy Smith read that lost first draft at a University of Maine Poetry Hour one Tuesday afternoon in 1968 or ’69, and it was well received. Why not? He gave it his all, really belting it out. And people are captivated by a good story, whether it’s in verses or paragraphs. This was a pretty good one, especially given the format, which allowed me to strip away all the prosy exposition. In the fall of 2008, I got thinking about Jimmy’s reading, and since I was between projects, I decided to try re-creating the poem. This is the result. How much resemblance it bears to the original I really can’t say.
Jimmy, I hope you’re out there someplace, and come across this. You rocked the house that day.
The Bone Church
If you want to hear, buy me another drink.
(Ah, this is slop, but never mind; what isn’t?)
There were thirty-two of us went into that greensore,
Thirty days in the green and only three who rose above it.
Three rose above the green, three made it to the top,
Manning and Revois and me. And what does that book say?
The famous one? ‘Only I am left to tell you.’
I’ll die of the drink in bed, as many obsessed whoresons do.
And do I mourn Manning? Balls! It was his money
put us there, his will that drove us on, death by death.
But did he die in bed? Not that one! I saw to it!
Now he worships in that bone church forever. Life is grand!
(What slop is this? Still – buy me another, do. Buy me two!
I’ll talk for whiskey; if you want me
to shut up, switch me to champagne.
Talk is cheap, silence is dear, my dear.
What was I saying?)
Twenty-nine dead on the march, and one a woman.
Fine tits she had, and an ass like an English saddle!
We found her facedown one morning,
as dead as the fire she lay in,
an ash-baby smoked at the cheeks and throat.
Never burnt; that fire must have been cold when she went in.
She talked the whole voyage and died without a sound;
what’s better than being human? Do you say so?
No? Then balls to you, and your mother, too;
if she’d had a pair she’d have been a fucking king.
Anthropologist, arr, so she said. Didn’t look like
no anthropologist when we pulled her out of the
ashes with char on her cheeks and the whites of her eyes
dusted gray with soot. Not a mark on her otherwise.
Dorrance said it might’ve been a stroke
and he was as close to a doctor as we had,
that poxy bastard. For the love of God bring whiskey,
for life’s a trudge without it!
The green did em down day by day. Carson died of a stick
in his boot. His foot swole up and when we cut away
the boot leather, his toesies were as black
as the squid’s ink that drove Manning’s heart.
Reston and Polgoy, they were stung by spiders
big as your fist; Ackerman bit by a snake what dropped
out of a tree where it hung like a lady’s fur stole
draped on a branch. Bit its poison into Ackerman’s nose.
How strong a throe, you ask? Try this:
He ripped his own snoot clean off! Yes! Tore it away
like a rotten peach off a branch and died
spitin his own dyin face! Goddam life, I say,
if you can’t laugh you might as well laugh anyway.
That’s my goddam attitude, and I stick by it;
this ain’t a sad world unless you’re sane.
Now where was I?
Javier fell off a plank bridge and when we
hauled him out he couldn’t breathe so
Dorrance tried to kiss him back to life
and sucked from his throat a leech as big as
a hothouse tomato. It popped free like a cork from
a bottle and split between em; sprayed both with the claret
we live on (for we’re all alcoholics that way, if you see my figure)
and when the Spaniard died raving, Manning said
the leeches’d gone to his brain. As for me, I hold no opinion on that.
All I know is that Javy’s eyes wouldn’t stay shut but went on
bulging in and out even after he were an hour cold.
Something hungry there, all right, arr, yes there was!
And all the while the macaws screamed at the monkeys
and the monkeys screamed at the macaws and both
screamed for the blue sky they couldn’t see,
for it was buried in the goddam green.
Is this whiskey or diarrhea in a glass?
There was one of those suckers in the Frenchie’s pants –
did I tell you? You know what that one ate, don’t you?
It was Dorrance himself went next; we were
climbing by then, but still in the green. He fell
in a gorge and we could hear the snap. Broke his neck,
twenty-six years of age, engaged to be married, case closed.
Arr, ain’t life grand? Life’s a sucker in the throat,
life’s the gorge we all fall in, it’s a soup
and we all end up vegetables. Ain’t I philosophical?
Never mind. It’s too late to count the dead,
and I’m too drunk. In the end we got there.
Just say that.
Climbed the high path out of all that
sizzling green after we buried Rostoy, Timmons,
the Texan – I forget his name – and Dorrance
and a couple of other ones. In the end most went down
of some fever that boiled their skin and turned it green.
At the end it was only Manning, Revois, and me.
We caught the fever too, but killed it before it killed us.
Only I ain’t never really got better. Now whiskey’s
my quinine, what I take for the shakes, so buy
me another before I forget my manners
and cut your fucking throat. I might even
drink what comes out, so be wise, sonny,
and trot it over, goddam you.
There was a road we came to, even Manning agreed
it was, and wide enough for elephants if the ivory hunters
hadn’t picked clean the jungles and the plains beyond em
back when gas was still a nickel.
It bore up, that road, and we bore up with it on tilted slabs
of stone a million years jounced free of Mother Earth,
leaping one to another like frogs in the sun, Revois
still burning with the fever and me – oh, I was light!
Like milkweed gauze on a breeze, you know.
I saw it all. My mind was as clear then as clean water,
for I was as young then as horrid now – yes, I see
how you look at me, but you needn’t frown so, for
it’s your own future you see on this side o’ table.
We climbed above the birds and there was the end,
a stone tongue poked straight into the sky.
Manning broke into a run and we ran after, Revois
trotting a right smart, sick as he was.
(But he wasn’t sick long – hee!)
We looked down and saw what we saw.
Manning flushed red at the sight, and why not?
For greed’s a fever, too.
He grabbed me by the rag that was once my shirt
and asked were it just a dream. When I said I saw
what he saw, he turned to Revois.
But before Revois could say Aye or Nay, we heard thunder
coming up from the greenroof we’d left behind,
like a storm turned upside down. Or say
like all of earth had caught the fever that stalked us
and was sick in its bowels. I asked Manning what he heard