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I'M A MIGHT -HAVE -BEEN
"Are you, in fact, a privileged
ghost returned, as usual, to
haunt yourself?"
This stooped over park -bench
philosopher with his hands in his
pockets started talking when they
put him on felief and he won't stop
until they put him back to work.
Worry has made his face pasty and
he makes sure to sleep as little as
possible so he can exhaust himself
into SC tolerating his world. He is
in his late thirties, of average height Kxi
and his solid body has grown fat
through disuse.
(This stooped park -bench -philos-
opher with his hands in his pockets
started in talking when they put him
on relief and he won't stop until they
put him back to work. Worry and
lack of sleep makes his face pasty.
His large belligerent mouth twists
with ironic pleasure as he talks. He
is in his late thirties, of average
height and his solid body has grown
fat through disuse.)
I'm A Might -Have -Been
IADMIT it, I'm a hog. In other
words human. I enjoy women and a
pair of doughnuts like anybody else.
Say tomorrer I wake up I'm covered
in communism, say I can go and get
what I want by asking —I want six
wives. You maybe want 24 suits and
him, they gotta give him twelve
yachts otherwise he's miserable.
We're nuts, we're all deprived so
long we went nuts. Plain hogs. It's
chemical, you can't A9 nothing. We,ti,
rnic wta
90% water, ROrid 10%
_t_kfc*,s—sodium helium oxygen hy-
drogen potassium phosphorus cal-
cium and so forth. Atzthe.santeidime
"Tri this kinda world 2 plus 2
JSiew Look at me. t7•41,mk
con, like a dirt monke True? I'm among
t e world oqnissing men. I'm so in-
significant if they sent out a radio
call for me a kindred years nobody
would find me
lapsed, I could write my whole will
on a postage stamp, not a single coin
of the realm you'll find in my pocket,
I ain't got enough real estate to put
in a flower pot. `Mrzistal-h-enr why
should I sing my country 'tis of thee
or welcome sweet springtime I greet
you in song? And yet, my friend,
you can never tell the way you stand
by the way you're sitting down. Lis-
ten to what I'm gonna say to you
ly—the bacteriologist of
today was himself a bacteria in
primeval times. Sh! iibmirraik. Think
that over
Myself, I'm a might -have -been. I
could tell you something else —I'm a
genius and so forth, after all, you're
a stranger to me. But it ain't what
you call yourself, you can say you're
Jesus and you ain't even St. Patrick.
True? Wtiiirokrost inside a sweat
Ote. 64/047-s-fiiiii'like a fly in winter time. You go
into it a man and you come out cock-
eyed hunchbacked knockkneed pi-
geon-toed flatchested—you're a wash
rag and a walking prospect for the
undertaker. You gotta put a mark on
your feet to know right from left.
The gray matter and the different
parts of the cerebellum are deflated.
II) So I was fired. The boss said he
gotta make sacrifices he started with
me. Before, I was lost, jig I was
still worse. I had bicycles in my
brain. I was asking myself always:
am I coming from or going to? Here
I was free, the whole day in the air,
in the sun, but still I wl„§„fgroping,
the park w -a -s- the saxicihe shop..1
One swallow don't mace a sum-
mer. When you're alone you can
bark at the moon like a boogie dog,
you can go sit down on the ground
and open up your mouth you'll catch
mosquitoes, that's all. A chain is
strong like its weakest link and that
was me. I don't say I didn't let off a
lotta hot air in them trying times,
it's a free country. I lived by my
own oxygen. But also —we got a
check and balance system here, there
ain't no dictatorship, nobody gets
away with murder, you can manifest
yourself, true, you can express your-
self, but the other guy can check up
on you if he wants to.
Well, I got plenty checking up but
in the end I was a citizen of the
world. I didn't bow down to the dol-
lar, I was international, a progres-
sive. I followed the head, you under-
stand, the others followed the rear
end, they were retro-gressive. You
find some people in this day and age
they like to be both. If they're down
in the Battery they're up in the Bronx
too, these budweisers, these political
fakers. They claim if you're in a
steam room at the highest tempera-
ture you're freezing and if you go
into a frigidaire you're hot. Why
does ice smoke? They tell you: be-
cause it went crazy with the frost.
They're always arguing: if it's hot as
it's warm while it's freezing it should
be cold you think it's gonna be hot?
Bah! I wouldn't stoop myself so low.
The average man should think twice
before he speaks and then —shut up.
Which reminds me —ain't it time
for me too? Here I'm riding a whole
cavalry of ideas and I ain't got
enough to buy doughnuts. If I had
my life to live over again I'd choose
an existence of plenty. Otherwise it's
better for us to shut our eyes, the un-
dertaker downtown got a special this
week.
Which means this, this whole spiel.
It's an explosion, I mean an explana-
tion, of one thing —I got cursed with
a social consciousness and how much
I would like to do something about
it I can't. Brain I got plenty but
the will power of a Chinese Eskimo.
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