[Am I Right]

Document text

It. and you, fantasy nonicouid
dresamorld Dora, and hallucina-
tion Harold, and delusion Disk,
and nights led.
What is it, howdy you say it,
'that does it mean, ehatts the word,
that airsela thlng, the thing that
oault-bs so, quota, unquote, but
lust the same it's true .11
t *2-1

21YGIENE .,102
Pe:ople ain't natural. They eat too much. You know, your
stomach can hold maybe a pint. The majority of people cram a whole quart
into it. What happens? lTeuritis, arthritis, nephritis, colitis and so forth.
Take the question of sex. Lajority of people are sex perverts.
Overdo it. Can't stay away from the wife. Got to adulterate her. Animals
don't dp that, insects neither. It ain't natural. You can sit near a fire;
you don't have to lay right in it, do you? You can =ell poison, can't you;
you don't have to go ahead and drink it. You can drink water, you don't have to
drown in it. Am I right or wrong?
Lost natural place in the world is the Cariibbeans. Plenty of fruit
and you never get constipated. I was there six years ago. Before that I was
just an honest dope. You know, work all, time, worrying and take everything
serious. Well,suddenly I started in using my eyes and I saw an awful lot,
I'm telling you.
For instance, I discovered the less a guy works the more money
he's making. After a while, I started in working less, see? I figured you
know the way I figured. But something went wrong with the idea. The less I
worked the less I was making. But I still figured the same way. So I tried
it again. I worked less and less. And sure enough I got less. Well, finally,
I worked less and less and less, and then I stopped altogether. I'm stubborn.
You know. Once I get an idea, I don't let go. So I got fired. So I thought
I'd blow the stink off and I goes down to the Cartbbees. That was heaven.
Soon as I can I'm going to work on that problem agaih. Go and find
me another job, and find out what was wrong with my system. So far as I can
see, personally, it was all right.
But the most natural way of all is like the way I'm doing now.
-1k)t working at all. It's the most hygienic. How does it strike you,
an I right or wrong?

9
the
thin
re
There isn't
in the abysm* b
People sin
yor stamadh kin bold
a *hole quart int*
nefritis, solitis forth.
poivoits.
adulterate her
ain't
right in it,
bays to go
an
not
y eat too much. Ms knew,
De majority:vb. people arm
Neuritis, artritis,
vb sax. jority—vh people are sex
it. can't stay from de vita. Got to
Animals don't do inssets neider. It
Ye kin sit near a ftr ye don' have te lay
yuh4- Ts kin smell pOisa, ameba, ye don'
ant drink it. Yet kin altink water, ye don'
have to in it. Am right or wrong?
naoberal place in di moil' is de Caribbean,.
Plenty a t an ydh kin nevdh get eonstipMted. I vas dere
six limbs a0o. Before dat I ems just an boaast *epee 31th
know, work ill a time, worryin and take everything sorloms.
Well, suddenly I started in vain egraryse an I Mean ameal lot,

Va tellin ydh.
Fir butane*, I disoovered de less a guy works the
more money hots makin. Aftdh while, I started in workin less,
soo? I figgerod you know de may I figgered. But susthin went
wrong wid de idea. De less woiked de less I vux makin. But I
still figgered de same way. So tried it again. I yolked less
n loss. An sure snuff, I got leas. Well, finally, I yolked
less n less n less, and dIn I stopped altbgether. I'm stubborn.
You know. One* I get anlidika, I don't let go, So I got fired.
So I thought I'd blow 4411 stink off end I goes down to de Cari-
bbees. Dat 'sus boaven
Boons I man I'm goini to verk on dat problem again.
Go ant find me &nod& r Job and find out What vus wrong wid my
system. Naoherallyiso fare I kin sev, personally, it vms all
right.
But de MMt naohera way or all is like de way I'm
doin now. Not volkin at all. TVs de most dygionio. Bow doss
it strike ydh, am I right or wrong?

AR AMERICAN SPINE WITH A HEART FROM THE OLD WORLD
(An aging Bronx Jew iftwainn-
employment ha robbed o eta
as father, lo
breadwinner, e marr ad
and worked fi
household with
although fulfi
duties and as
appetites
over place
he o
career as va bond.
he hasn't e er the
inclinatio He is
old man, narrow
are Int ad, and his
though s ill thick and
with an owtyhopeloss
he talks.)
and rages,
all his
all his
a wife took
inner,
trated
Now he finds
health or
y a tired
r011n eyes
ipa, al
smack
d as
*What will
will you
What will
you do?
and where
do? What will
t will you do?"
Go heng yourself with your own necktie. When I'm
fifty years, an old man, I'm strolling around with my hands
in my pockets. I'm suddenly a vagabond. I'm telling you I
got specks in my eyes. I'm screaming in my sleep, I'm ain't
human no more.
After all, human nature is four things, ain't it?
Clothing, food, shelter and recreation. In the morning you
wake up, the first thing you put on your clothes, the second
the belly starts in to talk, so you gote eat. the third
thing you want recreation. So you get tired out, then you
gotta -lay down. But where is the bed? We ain't animals,

they can sleep in a hole in the ground, nature gave them
their can clothing. About insects, we ain't talking
neither bedbugs and mosquitoes their whole life is
recreation.
What ahall I do? I ain't a tub of wisdom, I'm
a plain old man. Like they say around here, I ain't a
thoroughbred. Suddenly it's a different world. Yesterday
I'm sure a thing is wrong, today somebody is doing it. So
if somebody is doing it already, it can't be wrong"?
I'm completely turned around. I'm a not, N -0-T.
It's the world of the doughnut and the hot dog. Nothing
balances.
An old man was asking them for a blanket last
week, I saw it with my own eyes, they sent him to the
hospital.. First they kill you, then they are putting a
pillow under your head.
Look, my face. Such a face you don't get laying
in the lap of lady luck. It's three years already I
come home three o'clock in the morning the kids are in bed
but my .if. she's dressed up to kill. Sarah, what's the
matter? I elk. She says: I'm going out. What out? I
say. In the middle of the night, out? Go to bed, Sarah.
She says: You go to bed, I'm going out. So a whole month
I worried and complained and talked and finally she throw
me out of the house altogether. What could I do? /t was

5
her property, I was depending on her. I was no more a
man, you understand, not human, so she threw me out,
twenty-six years we vas married. The Bible tells you when
Abraham was an old man the peoples they sent him in a young
girl she should make him young again. But am I Abraham
they should do this with me? Impossiblet Go get born all
over againi
A question: was I really born? Or maybe God
dropped me through a hole in the sky and I ain't born yet.
Dead I ain't neither. I'm like stuck in a sewer pipe. I'm
in it, I'm stuffing it up and they're pushing me down in the
river, the East River or the Hudson River, I got no choice.
Back I can't go. It's too late. Like yesterday
I was standing on the breadline, Was it yesterday? What is
it today? Tuesday? That's right, yesterday I was standing
there and suddenly a cop hollers: Back up. Two hundred
people on the line, be mays to them back up. So be started
in to shove, in two minutes there was a fight with three
broken heads. You can't back up no more.
One thing I'm finished with iivi and like
they say here. The whole life it's like: a cough, and when
you're living it's like sucking cough drops it don't help
the poor people. And of course the rich people no
helps no more-- it's like a lot of pigs eating pigs' knuckles.

What can I do? I got an American Apine but with
a heart from the old. world.
The only thing it's a good God, a wise God, he
won't let me live long. That's all.

TAM-NAN BOYCOTT OP TEE UNIVERSE
mAs time, time ime slips
between and
flews the heart
time af it eemes ta
this, it a question of
time.4
(This high- trung s in.
telleetual wiry swarthy
with oily s groan Inel•
His mouth is between
self-pity and ter contempt.
A permsnen gr a of satire is
on his li He earns carfare and
coffee by se Ins' a aeathing
broadsi against tier. A hab-
itue o the New To Public Lib-
rary he rounds out nervous
de Lotions of die torlhip with
au ings from eneyel as and
thesaureses.)
I am a scholar of cosmos, my contemporary friend.
Cosmology, histology, pathology, neurology, astro-physiology
and the whole tautology of existence are my fields. Is there
a design, a scheme, a plan in this world? No, I declare, no,
no and again no.
The world is tottering toward catastrophe, my friend,
it is suffering fluctuations, alterations, transformations,
in short, flux. In order to save their front lawns and
limousines, the economic royalist gang of psychopaths, para-
noiacs, neuresthenies and megolomeniacs in short, butchers

sniff and a nibble and lik-BA-A-A-A4kH1 What have we here?
Ath du Lieber. No meal or lunch or dinner but a repast a
banquet rare, a feast. He rings the dinner gong and they all
come running in droves the ring-sworms„ the earthworms, the
round worms, the flat worms, the tapeworms and preatol it's a
skull and bones. You see? It's the cosmic revenge of the poor.
But not for me, No, my contemporary. I must have my revenge
now, now, now. Who can trifle with lockouts, walkouts, walkins,
sitdowns, sleeping? I was never hired, so I can never be fired.
My strike is a one -wan boycott of the whole world. You see?
I blockade the universe.
Now look into the future. Cast your imagination
into the crystal globe. Every day more and more people out of
work, every day more and more joining my ranks, year by year
more and more and more millione and billions throughout the
Are you following me? Do you see the vision, the
apparition, the overpowering apocalyptic panorama? A whole
world, my friend, without a single person at work.
1p
Colossal. ahatt \What keeps ma from going mad?
Why, words, my contemporary, just words.

1/TINIG 0 TIME. TURN BACK IN THY PLIGHT
'The me
jammed el
the dere
owned by
of
the audi
weeping
the mor
fri
A war and a depres ion have made
this vete a men cripple at
forty. The are •p furrows in
his thin big b face and his
hands tremble I be bas left
is a wicked imental leer in
the pale blue He MS lying
on the grass antral Park with
a derelict •ny yes-men. A
*World's r b passed by and
he stra nod up early, put on
his hat, t and t and went off
to *make her. From back, be
looked pper and laun even if
his cl •ea were cress
OS
li dive,
colleagues,
the skyscraper,
twin, the pimp
and philanthropy;
=so packed with
tors, your peers;
nanted by your
he dead .n
He who shuns wine, women and song is just a fool his
whole life long. Omar Kayyam. That guy was right. All al'
a:
these World's Fair broads passi up and down, real blousers,
io
and got lay on the grass watch. I ought take a stroll
Wall Street and draw some dough but it's too damm far. I
tried to hock the Chrysler BMildisnbut they wouldn't take it.
Then I sold the Essex House but I couldn't collect. Now all
I got is this dime and I'm lookimfor its borther. If I don't
___)
find it before tonight, I'll just ifta- go up and sit down by
the window and listen 4( the radio.
I ain't used t'il, it. I hate them furnished rooms

use that taste of heaven my wife gime. Player piano,
books, radio. Full icebox steaks, chops, the best. All
she asked ma tik do was stay home and take care of the ?louse.
When she come home at night she always threw a coup 4 packs
of cigarettes on the table.
Hell, I couldn't stand it. I felt like a house-
maid, a goddam domestic, One mornin3she left ninety cents
for my lunch and the kid's, crackers When she come home from
school, and a shay. Well, I hocked the radio and bought -a
quart for the boys and we went to work on a couple bottles.
When I woke up next morthey min. gone.
I guess I like layilyon the grass too =mill. Tough
work anNlong hours only gets you an early grave, don't it?
Like my old man. Layin3under the ground there. Lay17)there
and laughl_y Son, he's sayin you go ahead now, I'm layin_c)
down suArest.
I didn't even give\c\im a Fathers Day present week be-
fore he died. I figured it's commercialism, anyway, it don't
matter. If ain't got the guts to remember your mother and
father every day in the year and gotta depend on phoney
6\1
commercialism ya- don't deserve a mother, ye deserve ti be
born from a pig, a whole litter, goddam it, a whole goddam
litter. If my dUeghter ever tries bringip)me candy on
Fathers Day I'll kidk\rer in the can.

If she =her mother come back, I mean. I keep
my soul full of hope. I ain't layin)down like my old man
anAtals a rest. I read in the paper* some idle rich guy
shut himself up in his room, it woe the Essex House, and
stuffed up the windows and the door and got imself gassed up.
Must of been too dark so he decided to find his way out. BO
lit a cigarette. EA found his way out all right. Him and
the whole roam there blew outa the window. 4, 0 time, 0
time, tur4 back in thy flit and make me a kid again just
for tonight. Ys know what I'd do, if I ever decided to sort
of take a rest, take a long swim out in the ocean. After a
while I'd get tired but I'd keep on swimmintand then I'd get
so tired I couldn't lift my arms at all. Then I'd get scared
and turn around and swim for shore but I'd never reach it,
see? I'd try like hell torget back and I'd go undertryin"!.
It'd be like life that way, yeWaaU-live but ye-olift die.
Lissen, yorsuze yoCcan't gime the brother *this
dime? Or do I hatUi go down t$ the river bank and draw a
couple breaths of air? .Ys just as broke as I am?
Talkin sure gets ysrnowhere fast.
I gog/amscray outa here quick. This grass city is
only a paradise for pigeons.

I
Loci
r
9
4, 0, steadf t pauper, 0#
up* snood t 0#
still skeleton, 0#
tall and me target, 0,
neat* strong,
ambitio brave spective
ghost •to
This giant of a patria s with
his lean stomach and I
shoulders, waves his 1 arms in
large preacher -like g tures. He
stridee around, ye stops abort,
whines, 4ntones* ta, barks to
the howliag. amus nt of the creed.
His untrimmod ha flaws to his
shoulders, eavy grey board
conceals a re utio4 his blue eyes
are mean an'lie vous and his
nose is a rd be An actor always,
he enjo the attent n„ even the
contemp of the crowd since ha is
superior to it.)
SH‘A*A-AVEN AND SR0-0-0-ORNI
Listen, God desired to put hair on a man's face so ha put it
there. Woman he desired to make beautiful so he made her face
amaoth. On man's face he put wonderful ha-a-a-air....GOD made
ME a MANI...SHEEP. SLAVES... Where's your individuality/ Where's
your personality/ Where's your singularity?..../WHY were you
BORN? Slavery& SLAVERYt...YOuI Why don't 7%kr shave your head,
TO0?...ealf men. Women. WOMENt MaTATION NEN...80G-eatert
SWINE-EATERI...ii,sa-gut. Swine. Booze and BEER..../
0-0-0-0HI Silk -A -A -AVER A-Ad.And (BREAM INTO
SONG)

They look so pitiful, so sad
So miserable, s -o -o -o forlorn....
And they wander, o -o -o -h they w-a-a-e-nder
0 w-hy-7-7-7 were they born
To be shaven and shorn....
COWARDS1....COWARDS1.../
0-0-0-0E
H -Er -EE is an average man.
Go all the world around.
Six months in jail and six months out
He IS an average man.
They act so very queer
When they are full of
4T*GUT1 SWIM BOOZE AND BERRI
Right here on Union Square
BAHL
In contempt
While the drunken nuts
talk away
I -I -I-1 lust walk away.
(DON'T WALK SO FAST. WE'LL GET BLISTERS ON OUR neT....BERE,CHICK,
CHICK, CHICK, CHICK, CHICK
Cowards. Cowards....Sneakt Freakt...Go back to the coffin, all
of you.

IT'S PROM TIME MEMORIAL
"With o
more ni
somehow
This adolescent
Whitman's child
and whatever objec
upon* he became."
searching f or his
girl face* the goa
shipping clerk h
scarred knuckles
gether into the ank h
pounds of alb and knee Loose
impulses flash in and out it the
tired grey eyei squinting lust
the sun. His words come au now
vague, now blunt* but always uzzled.)
is 1 Walt
t forth
looked
is still
tity. The
th* the
w the
n't eoe to
hour* one
one more day
be killed."
I could tufn out to be the biggest success if it
for one thing I can't play dirty tricks on people.
I &mine* I like to be with the guys that are buck tit„ not
duoki!p, 1- know what I mean? I despise the suckers. I'm
4e generation I can't wait. I gotta go off
and do tumitUlnbig right away. Get egMthi_n:)virgin and play
it. Play it big. But nOthinv\happens around here. Why is
f,./1
that? Some man I wuz talkinoto in the park here once told
me about Moses, how he used to go around like this too until
he got disgusted. After a while, he said* the older guys
they died off* then Moses Is that a fact? I gotta
wait the same as Moses? It's from time immemorial* like the
man said? My personal idea if things wtmedifferent I could

omc
amount to surrthin4 I could be a leader maybe. A Capone, a
Schultz, one not one a the mob. Like Moses way on
top. Why not? I come from art people, I got what it tikes,
I catch on quick to anything.... Hey lookit. Them two girls
u
holdiu5eaoh other around. Is it true about them? Jews, vett*
shame. They'ri,.pretty Oldiever read tho Well of
Loneliness? I did. I get the best books out the library, it
don't help. I !Ciao, books don't do me no good. Why is that?
What's wrong with me anyhow? I gotta -snap out of it... One
time last spring I" hitchhiked to Fhilly for three days. It's
a funny thing, hitch -hiking, maybe you got a million worries
on your head but you hit the road and everything disappears,
like magic, you forget everything. When I got back to New Mork
it vuz one in the morning. I didn't feel like goin!pome so I
come over to the park here and I laid down right on this bench
and stood there all night. There voz-other guys on the other
benches and I laid there with my eyes open and looked up at
the stars and before I knew it the sparrows ays-singin)in the
trees. I dunno, I don't never feel lonely in this park, I
like it here. I sortt find friendship, I guess. That's
important, ain't it? That's the dreamy side of me, I suppose.
0\c
I like it that way... Sumtimes I go to a movie, then I walk
around thinkin Lotsitthings. The whole world. Money, for
instance. Supposin)I von a big prize. What would I d$ Would
I spend it or put it away in the bank or would I go nuts?

-3
Sometimes I go to the movies twice a week and I play this
game Screen°. Every day somebody is winninl I never won once.
cy
That way I'm different from other people. No luck. 7A'know
if I won? I'd go ahead and buy a whole outfit end sail off to
some island. Some place nobody ever gone before. in Africa
or Australia or South America. One of them places. I'd buy a
gun and a knapsack and breeches and boots and a knife and a
6.90N
mackinaw and, I dame, I guess I'd travel. Nowhere in perti-
cular. Just travel around And then again, maybe I wouldn't.
Maybe I'd spend the whole money on my old lady. Send her out to
Lakewood for the winter. Ye- see What I mean? There's two sides
to my nature. What's the difference? I don't win anyhow.
Maybe I don't deserve it. I :.--always the flower of the class
the bloomiryidiot. How hard I try I can't control myself from
bein)bed. I'm always thinkiinpf things that don't do me no
good. Riddles and things what's got no legs and walks, or
what's got eyes and can't see, or what turns without movf
The trouble is I got things on my mind. Jeezi When the Oork
V,AQ,
brought ma to my old lady he mustiksaid to her: "Nuts to you,
I CNN
MittiaMFV...t I itte too much for me, I can't make it out.
Maybe it's like that man said to me once.; "It's from time
t),
immemorial, son." All I know this kindt life is givipe
pimples. I got no more moral standards. What do you think,
that yeast stuff they talk about on the radio is that good
for pimples?
OW

YOU CAN'T FIGURE ON A LIFETIME NO MORE
*Tell bow
gayer oit
speak of s
hungrier,
time any
She is a thin, timid
typist. The bon
beneath the gay
the wrist vnder
from Ream's is t
calves of her legs
under the sheer h
the pale chestnu
like against the
you took the br very
smile and the 'aby t
eyes you'd ha e a ske
slave with
Brian. Ahem
her too de
helpless,
ems of
In fact
p the eyes
gry tears.
-chewing
s of er hips show
from Klein's,
velty trinket
sharp, the
re too skinny
614/ special,
too Garbo-
us eyes. If
out of the
at out of the
ton wage
island and
if you struck
uld fill with
it s in some
brighter place,
bloodier,
e treacherous
age, any far
My boss, that nosey thing, he was always sittion
me with them over -developed muscles until I got sick and tired.
Where I got the incentitive that day I don't know.
Maybe it was because I was wearing white, I like White, I wear
everythipig with a white collar, it makes me feel good.
The boss was in the front with a big customer, I was
sitting there and typing like my heart would break, I was
hankering for life. Hose, I said to myself, in this dap and
age you can't figure on a lifetime. Marriage is getting pushed
further and further in the background, if you're single it's no

stigma. I got up from my desk, I opened the boss's door and I
yelled: Look, Mr. Sternberg, you can wait a hundred years and
you'll never get a typist like me. Look at my hair, my white
blouse, my nails. I never look unruly, I'm never idle a minute,
and I got artistic ability besides. Next payday I want twelve
dollars.
U41-11---a_40,ish trait In front_of-a-ouetomer a goy
would, thtior-but-say-semetbaleast lrerfer: He opened up his big
mouth right away and pushed out his muscles and he yelled:
Miss Rosenthal, see me in the back. The most terrible thing,
you understand, see me in the back. I don't know, I wasn't even
scared. I was in the mood of maki!5monent nothing bothered me.
Listen, don't you thtnk they know if you're worth it to them?
They got big mouths but they know if you're worth it, don't
worry. You think he fired me?
I'm telling you from that day until he lost his
business he was so nice to me like my office boy, he used to
bring me up milk shakes. He was at my beck and call.
Before he was sitting on me, in the future every-
thing was in reverse, I was sitting on him.

I'M A MI? -HAVE -BEEN
"Are you,
ghost re
haunt yo
(This stoo d over k -bench
philosopher ith hi hands in
his pockets taluirg when
they put him o lof and he
won't stop unt y put him
back to work. Wo has made
his face pasty makes sure
to sleep as litt e possible
so he ean lf into
tolerating his rid. is in
his late thirt of a rage
height and his solid bod bibs
grown fat through disuse.)
fact, a privileged
as usual, to
I admit it, I'm a hog. In other words human. I enjoy
women and a pair of doughnuts like anybody. else. Say tomorrZI
wake up I'm covered in communism, say I can go and get what I
want by eaking—I want six wives. You maybe want 24 suits and
'to
him, they gotft &e- 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 do nothing. We're 90% water, 1120, etc.
and 10% miscellaneous —sodium helium oxygen hydrogen potassium
phosphorus calcium and so forth. In this kinl# world 2 plum 2
makes 6. Look at me. I'm among the world of missing men.
I'm so insignificant if they sent out a radio call for me a

hundred years nobody would find me. I am a dirt monkey. I
could write my whole will on a postage stamp, not a single coin
or the realm you'll find in my pocket, I ain't got enough real
estate to put in a flower pot. Then why should I sing my
country ttis of thee or welcome sweet springtime I greet you in
song? And yet, my friend, you can never tell the way you stand
-1ru
by the way you're sitting down. Listen to what I'm gnn say
to you now, --the bacteriologist of today was himself a bacteria
in primeval times, Sht Think that over...,
Myself, I'm a mighthave-been. I could tell you
something else --I'm a genius and OD 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 Staatrick. True? Most of
my life I was lost inside a sweat shop like a fly in winter time.
You go into it a man and you come out cockt!yed hunchbacked
knockkneed pigeoniloed flatehested..you're a wath-rag and a
walking prospect for the undertaker. You gott put a mark on
your feet to know right from left. The gray matter and the
different parts of the cerebellum are deflated.
So I was fired. The boss said he got4smke &earl
flees he started with me. Before, I was lost after I was still
worse. I bad bicycles in my brain. I was a -4)mys.ltsigeopso
Am I coming from or going to? Here I WA free, the whole day in
the air, in the suns but still I was groping, the park and the
shop was the same.

One swallow don't make a summer. 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 weakcat link and that
was me. I don't say I didn't let off a lotts-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 yourself, but the other guy can
check up on you if he wants to.
Well, I got plenty checking up but in the audit was a
citizen of the world. I didn't bow down to the dollar, I was
international, a progressive. 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 temperature you're freezing and
if you go into a frigidaire you're hot. Why does ice smoke?
They tell you: because 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 ailL;Ile hot? Bahl I wouldn't
stoop myself so low. The average man should think twice before
he speaks and then shut up.

Whioh reminds me ain't it time for ma tool 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 UA to shut
our eyes, the undertaker downtown got a special this week.
Which means this, this whole spiel. It's an explosion,
I mean an explanation, of one tiling --I got cursed with a
social consciousness and how mmAh I would like to do something
about it I can't. Brain I got pLenty, but the will power of a
Chinese Eskimo.

TIIJUEE GOD FOR COLIBIBUS
A shy little
black suit, the s
legs of Which are
little arms and le
eyes are round and
the faintest ref
brings out the vs
at even the sugge
violence, yet be
faith in himself
and courtesy.
lug the mishit,
counter with a
My Love Is
His voice is
we
so
tiatt
die
and
was
behind
ndition o
An lvoning
ig and resonan
•resto
flophouse, w
whorehouse,
mixt
ing a droopy
and trouser
long for the
The black
ear, although
a of pain
be shudders
cruelty and
a quiet
tura pride
t serenad-
oafeteria
the songt
rer
ith to the
use, warehouse,
life of
Yes, it's a wonderful voice. And it ain't no
expense neither. A little eggnogg, some Heide's pastilles
40. it comes out clear like a canary. That's my nickname in
the sewer Sam, the Canary. Rough laborers, they ain't
artistic and sensitive like girls, but they call me the canary,
they gotta-, on account of my voice. I don't mean mi voice.
hate to say I, my. It's a born voice, that's all. It happens
by accident it's mine4 It's a pleasure. It's an inspiration,
it gives me a good appetite, it makes me happy. Except at
night I eat two cups of coffee and supper, I feel so heavy
it gets screechy. I'm too tired, it 4ffeeta the voice, you

understand. The slightest thing makes it screechy. I didn't
know till three, four years ago I even bad it. Nobody told me.
My wife never told me. She tried to kill it, even. She was a
nervous woman, irritable a born naggard. She put me on a
pedestal and made an idol out of me, then she knocked me off.
I got annulled.
I went to work in the sewers for WPA. It was an
accident one day I was shovelling and I began to sing. The
boys hollered for an encore. I was surprised. It was ad
inspiration, it put life into them. Since that time everybody
calls me Bing Crosby, Junior, because I'm an &mature. Your
whole life you go around, nobody tells you, nobody is decent
enough, now I'm Bing Junior.
My uncle had a baby he naned him Dennis. So what?
The kids on the block call him Ziggy. Foolishness. My name
is Sam Rosen, plain, I don't care who asks. June 6th
singing in A Low's Theater Amature Hours shall I go and change
my name? I'm a city-wide amature. 501 Madison Avenue, that's
WNW there, downstairs is a confectionery, they gave me an audi-
tion, they give me auditions all over. I sing in one room they
listen in another room over the microphone, the receiver, the
amplifier, whatever you call it. Then when I'm through, I
hear them say: "Thank you." It's an inspiration, the way they
say it. "Thank roil." Most of the time they ask for an encore,
too. It's an exYlfration4 you get a better appetite, you don't
feel like an appendage. Today it's so busy by slack everybody
is demoralised. They don't know where to look. If a person
looks up at the sky and somebody Whispers he's a Messiah, they

follow him. They don't know no better, they're looking for an
inspiration. Like on Forty Second Street, let one person only
look up, everybody is looking.
My inspirations I need to serenade a girl. When I
hear the call of nature, to satisfy my craving', follow my sex
nature, T need a mate. But I can't locate her. I got a good
nature, I'm quiet, not like other laborers, but since I'm
annulled I can't locate my ideal. I'm going to a matrimonial
bureau. A friend of mine, I know him a long time. HO's opening
a new office now on 42nd Street, he's sending me a post card, he
expects to get the American type, educated. I'm looking for a
lady with a brother or a father they're in business and they'll
allow me to work for them.
I'm not satisfied with the girls he got now. They're
fat or they're widows or they got children. Only one girl, the
was aim, with a good skin, three inches taller than me, we
clicked right away. But When we got through talking in the office
there, I asked her telephone number, she said: *Get a steady job,
I'll keep company." That ain't my ideal. Go get a steady job.
At what? Fixing fountain pens?
The only thing I got to depend on is the voice. The
sewer work is only ten eleven days a month so the rest of the
time I go to school. I take up French, acting, I learn aaneing,
classical dancing, even fencing. For poise, you understand.
Like a reel opera singer, only it don't cost me a penny. It's
WPA culture courses. It's a pleasures an inspiration. Thank
God for Columbus.