My Gang

Many people have been frighted and died in cemeteries
since the days of my gang, the night
Ninip Houde came up and talked to me
on the block and i rowed the imaginary
horse on the rowel of the porch rail

Where i killed 700, 000 flies or more
while Ma and Beatrice gossiped
in the kitchen, and while drape sheets
we airing on the line that's connected
to midnight by midnight riding roses

Oy- the one bad time that Zaggo
got home from school late, dark
in the streets, the sisters majestico
blooming in the alley retreat, beat,
'Your gang is upstairs' says my mother

And i go up to my closed smoky door
and open it to a miniature poolhall
where all the gang is smoking and yakking
with little cue sticks and blue chalk
around a miniature table on stilts

Bets being made, spittings out the window,
cold out there, old murder magoon
the winter man in my tree has seen
to it that inhalator autumn
prestidigitate on time and in ripe form,
to wit cold

To wit cold, to wit you, to wit winter
to wit time, to wit bird, to wit dust-
that was some game ole Salvey blanged
when he beat G.J. that time,
and Rondeau roared

Rondeau was the cookie that was always
in my hair, a ripe screaming tight
brother with heinous helling neck-veins
who liked to riddle my fantasms
with yaks of mocksqueak joy

"Why don't you like young Rondeau?"
always i'm asked, because he boasts
and boasts, brags, brags, ya, ya, ya,
because he's crazy because he's mad
and because he never gives us a chance to talk

Awright- i'd like to know what
Bobby's got against me- but he won't
tell, and it's brother deep- in the room
they're shooting the break, clack,
the little balls break, scatter di mania,

They take aim on little balls and break
em up to fall, in plicky pockpockets
for little children's names drawing

Pictures in the games in the whistle
of the old corant tree splashing

In the mighty mu Missouri lame image
of time and again the bride and groom,
bloom and again the bidal blood, oo,
too-too and rumble o mumble thunder
bow, ole Salvey is my alley

Ole Salvey's my alley i'll lay it on me
i'll shoot fourteen farthings for Father Machree
and if ole Hotsatots don't footsie
down here bring my gruel, i'll
be cruel, i'll be cruel