;.cCrazylouie & Stumblebum
;.l1,6,60,66,1,0,10,82,192,2,15,20,25,127,10,0,
;.l2,10,75,192,2,15,127,20,0,
;.l3,10,75,192,2,15,20,25,127,10,0,
CRAZY LOUIE & THE BUM

Published by SCAPEGOAT PRESS, 5 Ben Yehuda Mall

.P

              CRAZY LOUIE TUNES

The best of bad-time buddies
he lends what he's got
answers Tora honestly
and knows it's a mitzva to steal food.

-----
e.g. Crazy Louie & the Bum
confront everyone with Everyman damned
affects of pet agonies;
   wherefore I say:
    "Brace your feet & lend a hand
     to anyone you can help up,
     but don't get pulled off balance."

----- 
Crazy Louie too
joins the movies:
instant immortality --
front and center before a reporter
he's kicked off the set.
-----
Observing
Crazy Louie at his ease
perusing Talmud, at his feet
his world in ruins --
posing as poet I
admittedly do the same but 50 times better
measured by the shekels in my pants,
and so on
to the real world nested sets of sharks...
-----

Crazy Louie plays double-or-nothing:
instead of filing for unemployment
he applies to Ataret Cohanim:
if Messiach comes
he'll take a bath and get a job.
----- 
So note the
if not innocence
then, oh, say
'non-reflexive ahimsa'
hell, half-ass good intentions
of Crazy Louie and us his ilk
(shallowly judged and trivially used, oh cruel world)
but gallant as a comic-book soldier falling on a hand-grenade)
turn hate inward
and wear imagined derision
like an elaborately constructed crown of thorns.
.a4

  and the 10,000th Hamlet
here's our old friend, Crazy Louie
hunting for his own Laertes
ruthlessly through space and time
to find a crime fits his punishment.
.p


STUMBLEBUM'S PROGRESS
                                  
                                  ...and Stumblebum begot STUMBLEBUM
                                  whom he rode to Scapegoat Press-
                                  ipice.


An Amusing Hippy

Battered & half-made mad
trashcan bear appearing at tea-time
to be paid off in shlock-shop revelations

------
Broke but fastidious, he suffers rebuffs by retreating into epigrams.
-----

day breaks
Stumblebum grants it a second chance
and cursing, wakes
to survey his empire
largesses the geese, salutes the dog, reproves the cat
while body, like a fretful child
snubs his pretentions of Puer Eternitas

Carnivorous giraffe

From cafe to nescafe
evading individuated craziness
in the daily Consensus
maximum alert at last
STUMBLEBUM on morning patrol
per hidden itinerary
reporting through a secret channel
to an unknown dispatcher.
------
Stumblebum doffs and dons his hat
in reciprocal response
to whoever last trod on his toes
doti or hilloni.
-----
     
 ...Stumblebum's Progress
     through time & space
     centerpiece of his own ignored parade
     preceeded by wishful thoughts, trailed by rueful memories
     hair grows wild dry and grey, eyes age besieged;
     each day an additional 10,000 brain-cells  opt for early retirement
     forgets names as his surviving words grow roots...
--------
as a 1-man government-in-exile
 he addresses himself each morning
 to the daily paper

Stumblebum Deluxe
servants 'sir' him
("If he bites, we may have to get shots.")

-----
STUMBELBUM productive:
another friend transmuted into epigram.
-----


On Recollecting a painting in the Metropolitan Museum

Rembrandt's preposterous
'Man in a Hat' say, shows, oh,
"the gallantry of poverty" --
No; seriously, salute Don Quixote
whose true nobility's to sally forth
though stripped of all trappings
but a fool's costume.

	Rembarant:  "The Noble Slav", NYC Met Museum

----- 

Stumblebum a-Courtin'

Billy goat days gone by
poor fish bent
to do his duty,
continuity...

----
.p

IA.  STUMBLEBUM'S LAMENT

One quick innocent cry
against leaving the womb of sleep; then
farting and cursing I start my day,
recollect place and quickly knit
a veil across abyss;
attending intestines sequential confession
of inefficient excess."

	:This poem stinks
---------------------------
Walking in the Rain

Gladly would I die today
to fly upon a Jumbo Jet
eonically to nowhere:
warm, soft, swaddled in straps and white noise
soothed by sweet indifferent foods
in Purgatory's inverse, Limbo,
where world atones its sins 'gainst man
by dispensing, 'twixt Departure and Arrival
no mere releaase from obligation
but guaranteed incapacity to act
and suspension of belief.

---------------
Times ain't precisely tough, but
in my mailbox
the only good news
is a draft notice.
     4/22/87
-----
stumbling thorugh a false short-cut
slightly lost, spaced, thirsty and hungry
how delicate the wildflowers
-----

hungry, I can't comprehend
why all who eat ain't happy
-----

I read the restaurant review 
for lunch.
------

I've spent today's ration
of false starts and failures
so soothe my soul with sugar 
drooling Fool  at the Feast
-----




All's said and done 
done again, dozens;
confessed to all I'm sure or dare
begged pardon, not foriveness, for the rest
under the rug;
on with whatever's left of the rest of it.
---------------------
40-day-rain

thought I wanted to call you
grey jello on the telephone lines
only ersatz dreams still in stock
Buy what you can, procreate, and get out.
----
-----
and on e.g. a 'melting' day
it's
as it were the -  'opacity'
of things that's
so unshriekably infuriating --
slow-motion commotion
all-thumbs stumblebum
nothing in its right place, even
ideas like chariots stuck in the mud
and is the elephant's fear of the mouse
chagrin?

-----           
The pen I stole 
went dry when I tried to write
but then revived, reversed
and ruined my shirt.
-----

Chamsin Downtown mid-day
"Confusion confusion,
I'm not to blame for all this confusion"
said Pound and (after a decent interval) died; or
just one "poem clear & passionate as the dawn"
"distracted from distraction by distraction"
honest man, Dog Diogenes

     Refs:  Pound's last interview, in the NY Times Mag
            Yeats
            Eliot, Wasteland
            "Dog Diogenes take me; with my flask and 
              laggard pouch I leave nothing under the sun"
                  Henry Shapiro as Oberlin sophomore,
                    if I recall

