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AUTOBIOGRAPHY
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
I am leading a quiet life
in Mike's Place every day
watching the champs
of the Dante Billiard Parlor
and the French pinball addicts.
I am leading a quiet life
on lower East Broadway.
I am an American.
I was an American boy.
I read the American Boy Magazine
and became a boy scout
in the suburbs.
I thought I was Tom Sawyer
catching crayfish in the Bronx River
and imagining the Mississippi.
I had a baseball mit
and an American Flyer bike.
I delivered the Woman's Home Companion
at five in the afternoon
or the Herald Trib
at five in the morning.
I still can hear the paper thump
on lost porches,
I had an unhappy childhood.
I saw Lindberg land,
I looked homeward
and saw no angel.
I got caught stealing pencils
from the Five and Ten Cent Store
the same month I made Eagle Scout.
I chopped trees for the CCC
and sat on them.
I landed in Normandy
in a rowboat that turned over.
I have seen the educated armies
on the beach at Dover.
I have seen Egyptian pilots in purple clouds
shopkeepers rolling up their blinds
at midday
potato salad and dandelions
at anarchist picnics.
I am reading 'Lorna Doone'
and a life of John Most
terror of the industrialist
a bomb on his desk at all times.
I have seen the garbagemen parade
in the Columbus Day Parade
behind the glib
farting trumpeters.
I have not been out to the Cloisters
in a long time
nor to the Tuileries
but I still keep thinking
of going.
I have seen the garbagemen parade
when it was snowing.
I have eaten hotdogs in ballparks.
I have heard the Gettysburg Address
and the Ginsberg Address.
I like it here
and I won't go back
where I came from.
I too have ridden boxcars boxcars boxcars.
I have travelled among unknown men.
I have been in Asia
with Noah in the Ark.
I was in India
when Rome was built.
I have been in the Manger
with an Ass.
I have seen the Eternal Distributor
from a White Hill
in South San Francisco
and the Laughing Woman at Loona Park
outside the Fun House
in a great rainstorm
still laughing.
I have heard the sound of revelry
by night.
I have wandered lonely
as a crowd.
I am leading a quiet life
outside of Mike's Place every day
watching the world walk by
in its curious shoes.
I once started out
to walk around the world
but ended up in Brooklyn.
That Bridge was too much for me.
I have engaged in silence
exile and cunning.
I flew too near the sun
and my wax wings fell off.
I am looking for my Old Man
whom I never knew.
I am looking for the Lost Leader
with whom I flew.
Young men should be explorers.
Home is where one starts from.
But Mother never told me
there'd be scenes like this.
Womb -weary
I rest
I have travelled.
I have seen goof city.
I have seen the mass mess.
I have heard Kid Ory cry.
I have heard a trombone preach.
I have heard Debussy
strained thru a sheet.
I have slept in a hundred islands
where books were trees.
I have heard the birds
that sound like bells.
I have worn grey flannel trousers
and walked upon the beach of hell.
I have dwelt in a hundred cities
where trees were books.
What subways what taxis what cares!
What women with blind breasts
limbs lost among skyscrapers
I have seen the statues of heroes
at carrefours.
Danton weeping at a metro entrance
Columbus in Barcelona
pointing Westward up the Ramblas
toward the American Express
Lincoln in his stony chair
And a great Stone Face
in North Dakota.
I know that Columbus
did not invent America.
I have heard a hundred housebroken Ezra Pounds.
They should all be freed.
It is long since I was a herdsman.
I am leading a quiet life
in Mike's Place every day
reading the Classified columns.
I have read the Reader's Digest
from cover to cover
and noted the close identification
of the United States and the Promised Land
where every coin is marked
In God We Trust
but the dollar bills do not have it
being gods unto themselves.
I read the Want Ads daily
looking for a stone a leaf
an unfound door.
I hear America singing
in the Yellow Pages.
One could never tell
the soul has its rages.
I read the papers every day
and hear humanity amiss
in the sad plethora of print.
I see where Walden Pond has been
drained to make an amusement park.
I see they're making Melville
eat his whale.
I see another war is coming
but I won't be there to fight it.
I have read the writing
on the outhouse wall.
I helped Kilroy write it.
I marched up Fifth Avenue
blowing on a bugle in a tight platoon
but hurried back to the Casbah
looking for my dog.
I see a similarity between dogs and me.
Dogs are the true observers
walking up and down the world
thru the Molloy country.
I have walked down alleys
too narrow for Chryslers.
I have seen a hundred horseless milkwagons
in a vacant lot in Astoria.
Ben Shahn never painted them
but they' re there
askew in Astoria.
I have heard the junkman's obbligato.
I have ridden superhighways
and believed the billboard's promises
Crossed the Jersey Flats
and seen the Cities of the Plain
And wallowed in the wilds of Westchester
with its roving bands of natives
in stationwagons.
I have seen them.
I am the man.
I was there.
I suffered somewhat.
I am an American.
I have a passport.
I did not suffer in public.
And I'm too young to die.
I am a selfmade man.
And I have plans for the future.
I am in line
for a top job.
I may be moving on
to Detroit.
I am only temporarily
a tie salesman.
I am a good Joe.
I am an open book
to my boss.
I am a complete mystery
to my closest friends.
I am leading a quiet life
in Mike's Place every day
contemplating my navel.
I am a part
of the body's long madness.
I have wandered in various nightwoods.
I have leaned in drunken doorways.
I have written wild stories
without punctuation.
I am the man.
I was there.
I suffered
somewhat.
I have sat in an uneasy chair.
I am a tear of the sun.
I am a hill
where poets run.
I invented the alphabet
after watching the flight of cranes
who made letters with their legs.
I am a lake upon a plain.
I am a word
in a tree.
I am a hill of poetry.
I am a raid
on the inarticulate.
I have dreamt
that all my teeth fell out
but my tongue lived
to tell the tale.
For I am a still
of poetry.
I am a bank of song.
I am a playerpiano
in an abandoned casino
on a seaside esplanade
in a dense fog
still playing.
I see a similarity
between the Laughing Woman
and myself.
I have heard the sound of summer
in the rain.
I have seen girls on boardwalks
have complicated sensations.
I understand their hesitations.
I am a gatherer of fruit.
I have seen how kisses
cause euphoria.
I have risked enchantment.
I have seen the Virgin
in an appletree at Chartres
And Saint Joan burn
at the Bella Union.
I have seen giraffes
in junglejims
their necks like love
wound around the iron circumstances
of the world.
I have seen the Venus Aphrodite
armless in her drafty corridor.
I have heard a siren sing
at One Fifth Avenue.
I have seen the White Goddess dancing
in the Rue des Beaux Arts
on the Fourteenth of July
and the Beautiful Dame Without Mercy
picking her nose in Chumley's.
She did not speak English.
She had yellow hair
and a hoarse voice
and no bird sang.
I am leading a quiet life
in Mike's Place every day
watching the pocket pool players
making the minestrone scene
wolfing the macaronis
and I have read somewhere
the Meaning of Existence
yet have forgotten
just exactly where.
But I am the man
And I'll be there.
And I may cause the lips
of those who are asleep
to speak.
And I may make my notebooks
into sheaves of grass.
And I may write my own
eponymous epitaph
instructing the horsemen
to pass.
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Life - a Reminiscence
David Sean Bourke (age forty-nine):
I was born at a young age in Homerton, in East London, of
Irish descent. I moved to Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire,
and from five, home was in Swiss Cottage, a Viennese-Jewish
refugee enclave in North London. As a nipper, I went to
George Eliot, a wonderful primary school...I cherish my
happy childhood memories there! Then I went to Haverstock
Comprehensive, a tough, harsh school a mile away in Chalk
Farm. My form teacher was Alan Scrivener. It was in the
early Seventies then, in the "glam" era...I had long hair
and I even used to wear high-heeled boots like I was David
Bowie or Marc Bolan! A heterosexual, but naively unaware of
what a vain, effeminate fairy I looked, I was chased and
beaten up by the girls. I mean, boys didn't even consider
me fair game! It was hell...a sheer hell. I misbehaved. I
failed in most of my exams.
At about thirteen-ish, I got into motorbikes. I used to hop
on a thirty-one bus and I'd beeline to F.H. Warr (a Harley-
Davidson dealer in Kings Road in Chelsea) and stare, while
in awe, at the massive, powerful, shining machines in their
window. I knew everything about them...except how to ride
one! I wanted to be Barry Sheene or Evel Knievel. I could
even recite gear ratios, external dimensions, engine
measurements, bore and stroke, for an Electra Glide, a Cafe
Racer, a Sportster...off the top of my vacant, juvenile
head. No use to anyone. Years on, I have still never ridden
a motorbike!
At fourteen I forgot about bikes, as I got into guitars. I
read up on the subject. I knew my stuff. I couldn't even
play one to any degree, but I knew all the model names,
numbers, values, good or bad points of each "axe" brand,
expensive and cheap. At fifteen, I switched to playing a
bass, as they had fewer strings to think about. Or maybe it
just suited my introvert personality. I left Haverstock,
then I worked in a shop (Chappell of Bond Street) selling
the things, where I met famous rock stars such as Carlos
Santana, Tom Robinson, Steve Howe, John Entwistle, Trevor
Horn, and Mark King on an almost daily basis. Which I
thought nothing of, this was just what a seventeen /
eighteen / nineteen-year-old did. I went skiing in Austria
annually. I got engaged at twenty-two to Terrie Smith, a
lovely, beautiful honey-blonde girl with whom I was
besotted (and had been for years before we became an item).
A shame it didn't work out with her...we split up, and
shaken, that night I smashed a car backwards into a brick
wall, and I got severe whiplash. It took me ages before I
got over the unbearable heartache, the anguish, the sheer
pain...oh man, I still miss that car!
Meanwhile, I played the bass in a bunch of under-rehearsed
and unremembered bands, with various haircuts...'The Outsiders',
'Pressure', 'Dance Macabre' (goth gloom, similar to Bauhaus),
'The Chance' (or "No Chance"! - a Shepherds Bush "mod
revival"...my favourite album is 'Quadrophenia' by The
Who), then 'Coda' (Queen/Van Halen-ish stadium rock
anthems...without a stadium!), 'The Marquee No-Stars',
'The Shout' (heavy Welsh blues)...none of them ever got
anywhere. (The bands, not haircuts. Well both, when I come
to think!). I played as a pianist in a cover band called
Self Inflicted...I remember an unimpressed landlord of a
bar in Holborn where we played...he thought I was SO bad,
he said, his eyes heavenwards, "If I ever see Dave near a
piano in here ever again, I shall superglue his fingers
together!"
In the Eighties, I was made redundant as a guitar salesman,
and hence I signed on the dole. I sat idle on my backside
for a while. I learned Italian and Dutch. I studied sharks,
whales and dolphins. I joined a scuba diving club. I played
underwater hockey nationwide for Hampstead. I tried hashish
...and I inhaled! I even tried hallucinogens. Then my
sister Jackie bought me a calligraphy set for my birthday,
despite (or perhaps because of) my illegible handwriting. I
experimented, and before long, I could write Georgian-style
script. Likewise, Olde English. Then a shop in Kensington
asked me to paint them a massive fascia sign. I did,
despite never having done one before. It didn't look half
bad. "I can do this!", I thought...and I've worked doing
"this" for a "living" ever since...all cut vinyl now though,
I no longer do painted ones.
Watching 'Have I Got News For You' in the mid-Nineties, I
was amazed when Ian Hislop pointed out 'Virginia Bottomley'
was an anagram of "I'm an evil Tory bigot". Unbelievable!
I had it verified on pen and paper. I endeavoured to create
a few anagrams myself...I failed to do anything memorable.
Then a few months later (in a branch of W.H. Smith...Bromley
South, if I am not mistaken), I saw a PC magazine with a
free cover CD that had a trial of a program called 'Anagram
Genius'. Oh, what fun! I used up all the ten trial runs in
half an hour. Being shrewd (and mean...too mean to actually
purchase a full version of said program) it didn't take
long to work out I could get around this by deleting a
particular file, and a manual reset of the PC date to a
month earlier. I didn't tell William Tunstall-Pedoe (the
software creator), but he realised. High on adrenaline,
here is where my life started to go downhill. Creating
anagrams started taking precedence over work. Before long,
I'd stare at a screen all day, wide awake at midnight, I'd
be awake all night...I'd fall asleep exhausted, as the
hours vanished. Every morning, I awakened, and I'd pop over
to a postbox and send my creations to a newspaper (the
Daily Mail) who occasionally printed one, and sent me a ten-
pound book token. I think I had at least seventy tokens
before even they got bored and stopped printing anagrams
for a while. I needed an outlet for my "creativity" though.
Eventually I'd start to meet with people driven with the
same dreadful affliction...new friends like Michael Tully,
Chris Sturdy, Mike Keith, Anna Shefl (alias "Lardy"), and
Phil Carmody, who I had met through an online group called
A.A. (alt.anagrams). We'd meet once, even twice a year in a
bar...The Metropolitan in Baker Street, London. We'd
invariably compare tales of household woe caused by our
unexplainable antisocial compulsion. Over the years, I must
have squandered whole months and haemorrhaged thousands as
I preferred to sit, pissed, impoverished, composing anagrams
...some simple, some mammoth, thousands of letters long...
some inane, infantile and tasteless (a hallmark I maintain!),
some driven by a sheer hatred of Tony Blair. The American
president, George W. Bush was a frequent victim, but I
didn't despise him, maybe he was just an obvious target.
Meanwhile, the Mail rang up...they were going to print
anagrams again, and would I please furnish them with a few
ideas with which to get started? No tokens this time, though!
Apart from which, it is nigh-on impossible to get anything
published in the Mail these days, as there is another
irredeemable, hardened veteran anagram headcase in Kent
...Tony Crafter from Sevenoaks. It seems he sneaks his ones
in each and every day!
What achievements! WHAT achievements? In consequence, I have
become an obnoxious, misanthropic, impoverished, unshaven,
shuffling under-achiever, a serial philanderer, a habitual
skiver, a pariah, a heavy absinthe drinker. I'm a horrible
husband to dear Catherine. Ah, the shame, the shame! I now
live in the Asian area in Rochester, in financial upheaval.
Anyway, as I am a vegetarian non-smoker, maybe I shall live
an extremely long time...either that, or it will just seem
like it! And William Tunstall-Pedoe? He has much to answer
for, damn him!
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