RAY BREMSER MEMORIAL
SECTION THIRTEEN

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COLUMN SEVENTY-FOUR, AUGUST 1, 2002
(Copyright © 2002 Al Aronowitz)

VAN BROKE DOWN IN COOPERSTOWN 12/11/79


(Photo by Dion Ogust)

[The following first appeared in HUNGER NO. 5 1999 and appears here with the permission of the author]

Duskeaten red sun an apple on the rag
Sets with perpetual vengeance drops withholding absolution to Utica
Four of us returning the old town’s blowing mouth, toothless   scarecroak
 joker of a poet
Ray by name
Bremser's mumbling nemesis by night
Shuffled off the cuff to Buffalo, could barely read his hands were bandaged,
 burnt & stuttering so
Now safely ensconced in fleabag pad on Genessee Street, the flophouse
 end of genesis
So bye bye to birdman of jazzy alchemical Alcatraz
Imprisoned in what he is like the Rizz like the Shah like Sha-na-na
 like shakti in any form
Imprisoned in the bottle he cackles & yodels odes from, ghost of vintage
 glossolalia going up in smoke
Adios Old Bloke, old spoke of the Wheel's English, old Bos'n of the Mother
 Tongue, old Mummy of what’s been clucked & sung to, sucked & dug
 deliciously on other, younger nights
Adieu to you in dignity, adieu to dire & barbate straits, your Kodak bric-a-brac
 broken on the wall, taped mosaic of flaked cuties, ruined beauties of Utica’s
 past & yours, yours truly
So out of town & out of sight, we're swallowed up in upstate Mohawk night
Money Honey Charlie Brown oldies on the radio the ragball backroads
 out of town
Four of us wasted & what the fuck, a '53 green Chevy panel truck
Destined to break down in Cooperstown, of all places
Shades of Abner Doubleday’s doppelganger
Shades of wingèd horsehide shot by Mel Ott into the ozone's parking lot
Shades of Ray in Cherry Valley, tough titty for the rest of the Committee
 at Allen's farm, five miles as the crow's ass flies across the sky’s blind
 Glimmerglass
But Cooperstown ain’t got no Bard's Museum or he'd be in it, rackety plaque
 & all
So dropping a dime go back in time we make the call that saves us for the night
And it’s pell-mell to the Plymells & a warm welcome for four spent friends-of­
 a-friend in the wee wee hours, sleeping on the soused couch & dreaming
 of MonK's ashes in a marble urn as high as the Washington Monument
Dreaming of Bremser born in Jersey Washington’s birthday 1934,
  that's all there is there ain’t no  jazz no more
Back to the land of blissful gigs, festive reciprocity & poetry rodeos
Dreaming of a reading where the reader's hands are full & do not shake  ##

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