5. Sitting close to the ground, my spine bending; I expect the words will happen according to the world.

4.

Humility is a blank
page upon which
the proud words rest.

3.

Words sit and work
-- seriously spelled
into being; or
unsure, wavering,
and stereotyped.
Words form from the machine.
The letters find themselves
arrayed before me.

2.

Coming from elsewhere,
the machine wrote, reread,
and crafted the writing.

The machine saw the writing
in the book of poetry, in the
set type, and the worth of the word;

while amity, anger, and awe
radiated from the roofs of the world,
and spread over tall city buildings.

1.

Typing,
working at a desk,
feet crossed beneath the seat,
small of the back supported by the back of the swivel chair;
back and forth
as if dovining.

The length of the line is not the length of the thought.

Bathing at Coney

I come to build sand castles,
to romp in and wrestle the tides;
the girl and the smile and the beach
beneath the sun; I come.

Around, around, around the whirling
wheels turn; around,
around the whirling world;
the oyster in the sea.

This rides me up and throws me down.
Your fantasies cling to me, splinter into me,

stick to me like the sand at the beach;
I come here amusing myself, a
grain in the dream.

The Village’s pass-through the history
of western art was on exhibit in
Bruno’s Garret. We came to the water’s
edge to read poetry and cast our words
to currents that carried to the ocean
all that was in the river; streams of dreams.

Through narrow
winding streets,
the gypsy
seer roams
the Village.

I wanted to live by the sea
or beneath a waterfall, while
all the world was elsewhere. When I'm
gone, cremate me with my sandals
on and toss my ashes into
a stream.

Amazed by fate
and the time we wait
where the old is on our minds
and the new goes by outside
(sometimes a poem drifts by).

Like breathing, here:
stepfather and lover,
making business
and keeping house,
breathing,
writing and reading.
All around the town,
boys and girls together . . .
Daisy, Daisy,
give me your answer true.
I’m half crazy
all for the love of you.
It won’t be a stylish marriage.
I can’t afford a carriage,
but you’ll look sweet
upon the seat
of a bicycle built for two.

Alien at Westbeth, Bank Street, and Sheridan Square,
I passed through the Eighth Street Bookstore and NYU.
I saw a surreal bohemia at Washington Square,
the Jefferson Market Library, and Balducci’s.
One word after another stopped at Minneta Lane.
Westway was not my poem. The old village was more real
than punk rock on Gansvoort, street singers on Greenwich,
and the tight ropewalker on Hudson. At the Bobst Library
I wrote a poem for the Cornelia Street Café. I swam at
the Carmine Street Pool; and found Jane, Perry, and Horatio.

My father complained bitterly of the hand mortality dealt him. He would not go gentle into that dark night, while at the center of the world, on the island of Manhattan, I sought poetry in a peaceable kingdom.

In Greenwich Village, like everywhere else, writers left their words; Millay in the narrowest house, Cummings in Patchen Place, Auden on St. Marks Place, and Ginsberg in the East Village. All put words down on paper, one after another, like the chop of hooves on cobblestone.

There. I put a new tape in the machine.

I like it here. I live here. I write here.

For twenty years, at home in Greenwich Village, I sat at this machine, typed away, and put the words down -- one word after another, making minimal sense. That home became my home.

I wrote four flights above Greenwich Street in an old sea chandler’s shop, converted to a working artist’s loft. I wrote, sang, and rejoiced in my bohemian Village; my soul, my bone and blood became one with my dreams.

Ukeleles strummed once in tea houses gave way to the blare of boom boxes in Washington Square across from Bruno’s garret.

I sat on the fire escape putting the words down, when the IBM Selectric typewriter fell off the table. Ooops.

Bobby Edwards played his ukelele at the Greenwich Village Follies and in tea houses. Edna St. Vincent Millay read her poetry and performed with the Provincetown Players. John Sloan and Max Eastman fought over policy at The Massses.

PJ, born in 1899, came to the Village in 1919. He was my Village historian: “Once Minetta Creek flowed in Greenwich Village. From Washington Square, look south to where Bruno’s garret drew tourists, who took the Fifth Avenue bus down to bohemia.”

In the early 70's I spent two years living on the Upper West Side, then moved to West Tenth Street. I was back in the Village.

After more than two years in Africa, Europe, and the Caribbean I returned to Greenwich Village, living at the Albert Hotel, attending classes at the New School for Social Research, and supporting myself by driving a taxi.

After graduating from Syracuse University in the summer of 1967, I lived in the East Village with Sarajon. We lived first on Fifth Street then on Avenue B around the corner from Tompkins Square Park where Tiny Tim played his ukeleke. The Real Great Society opened an art gallery on Avenue A, where Sarajon exhibited her paintings.

Later that season, I studied Camus at NYU and lived in a dormitory looking out on Fifth Avenue. My roommate, from Sao Paulo, spoke only Portuguese. He brought me to his aunt’s house in Brooklyn, where we drank Cuba Libres. I brought Beto, his sister, Fatima, and their chaperone, to dance the Bossa Nova at Barry Eilenberg’s party on Long Island.

In the summer of 1965, I first spent a week caretaking John Chapman’s Barrow Street apartment, which was below street level, and dreaming of becoming a Greenwich Village writer.

Village Body

On New Years Eve of ‘64, I brought Alice to the Café Bizarre off Madougal Street in Greenwich Village. That winter Cliff Smith, Richie Beirach and Lenny Shaw were playing jazz in a small storefront on MacDougal Street, when an old man succumbed to a fit during one of their sets.