"Get the gasworks into a poem,
and you've got the smoke and smokestacks,
he mottled red and yellow tenements,
and grimy kids who curse with the pungency
of the odor of gas. You've got America, boy."
__David Ignatow

in loving memory: John Logan

Get the gasworks into a poem

and you've got Walt Whitman.

Walt

with the sun at your left side

and death at your right you in

the middle like a daguerreotype

I remember you

your baggy buccaneer pants

hiding saucy pirates

with real-live locomotives and steam underneath

the beat-up breath of tenements.

What a smokestack you were!

your fly that became a rose in my

hand your hips haughty & the star juice I

catch from your eyes the flaring nostrils

the quaker chin the illuminations in every line

I approach you with this poem in my hand &

a warm welcome.

Walt

I know you had a gray beard how could it be any different

as I sit here dreaming of some manly cloud typing up

state requisitions

for the Maintenance Office maintenant! punching the clock

no body electric

your time shining on my eyelids one of the roughs.

your flashing armpits are like traffic lights and the

deep crimson thrill

that comes over me when I ride the subway convinced

of a new religion

& you in the corner (no caboose) with your hand on

your right hip trans-

parent like some lonely Poe-ship you created

with decks of sailors holding other hands. I imagine your

armpits to be a Japanese rainforest your smell that

prayer the saneness of your death

my death.

I look for you over my shoulder

I look for your cheekbones behind el gray

I know you hid the gasworks somewhere

the secret of your sad orb over rooftops

curious dream of factories your modern man behind tele-

visions yessuh

you got the world by the rear

and hindsight which was foresight

I look back on your because you look'd forward to me

& there is no stone untouch'd, Walt Whitman,

can I hold you to your promise?

will I find you on the CP Rail

on a long white train through Canada

behind those camerado Rockies?

can I sneak up behind you on the astral plane?

will you always be behind me like the Great Spirit on

the Staten Island Ferry?

I itch for you, you crazy sun

I unbutton your shirt & find leaves

yes! growing on your chest

I wear my Spanish cowboy hat the Shadow &

dance like a red bandana the wind my voice

wrestles with every telephone pole I can

find like a bloody angel viola joan of arc

medea sans jason or any Jacobean forget-me-not.

cheek to cheek, Walt Whitman, I have come to build

your bridge

will you settle for my hands.

© 1971/2004 - Jayne Lyn Stahl