God now I can see what I should of done
(this was years ago now, oh, many moons)

What I should have done

Join the circus
Ringling Brothers & Barnum & Bailey
my Pan-American cornet of silver & brass
gone up
like a scalded skylark
above the C above high C
above it all
yes O there
where that one thin high light silver line
feels its way step by step over the netless nothing above the Falls
full of barrels full of people
command performance for the King & Queen of England

Join the Redskin Indians (Woollylamb Halfmoon, how)
like in high school we used to talk about
that great tribe of half-assed Indians the
Semi-Holes

Join television
be sad as that poor pitiful beautiful bastard Red Skelton
knocking myself out hour after howling heartbreak hour
Tuesday night for Tide
for a handful of canned laughs
at a time no longer prime
but dumb time
time killed vamping
vamping & waiting for something else to come on

Some one else to come on

Join a circle jerk
floating back of some grey filling station at twilight
hand on hand of stump poker with a straight face
or flush face or a bluff & nothing face
not for chips or friends or competitive spirit
but pure joy of the game

Join the Rolls & Royce country club members only
to hobnob with old Saint John O'Hara our Comedian & Martyr

Merchant marine to meet people & hit the beach
with Nelson Algren & Gary Snyder

Join the cannibal Caribbean Isles
drink cowbells with old John Updike
& Herman Wouk & Adam Clayton Powell

Join the grocery to gobble all the red meat raw
on top of blazing catastrophes of pizza pies with pepperoni
& puke in the cash register

In to the cash register

Which is a bastard to clean
what with having to get down in there between the keys
& things

Join the damned teamsters
who drive not teams but tractor-trailer trucks
big fucking Macks
with rampant bulldog figureheads
chewing tough George Meany cigars or Red Man

Join politics to make speeches
with a fifty-inch waist
meat people in the YMCA & kiss
babes & get involved in doll-&-dollar scandals
& grin all the while
like a mule eating briars

Join cowboys & get to know old John Ford
Howdy John
nice weather for stealing cows

Join gangsters & get to know Henry Ford
& gun down incomparable Tyrone Power from the back

Join Muslims (William Ruth X)

Join the one true church (William Cardinal Harmon)

Join Confederate Air Force (Kunnel Hah-mun suh) & wear grey
grey
grey everything
to meet people interesting people
not people like me
with a stopped-up cornet
blowing spit out through the spit-valve
on the floor

On to the floor