THE BOOK OF SHIT

Frank Brangwyn

This was the first poem in my book CRUISIN' AT THE LIMIT: Selected Poems 1968-1978 published by Duck down Press, Fallon NV. 1982

THE BOOK OF SHIT

(invocation to the muse)

What fire then?

To give myself to children?

Oh woman run free before me

and let your hair come down, a winding sheet

for the fairest of the fair, the daughters

of the wind, your hair.

To be left alone somewhere in 1959

listening to fur piece bands play over

and over again, Night Train, memories

of bottles and stale smoke visions of black

haired girls dancing, legs spread, everybody’s 

hustlin’ brother, get your ass out there

and get it on.  And my guitar kept playing

thru Bill Doggett, spending a portion of your life

looking out the window of a smelly mens room

looking at the traffic going down Niagara Falls

Blvd., taillights like sores across the parking

lot.  And the band played on.

Sometimes I drank.

My first wife, dream bitch, falling

asleep on the couch and letting me rape her

in quiet of sunday afternoon after weeks of

not coming near my body, my brain warping

out on its own jetstream of her working and

not coming  home till two or three in the morning.

She didn’t wake up the whole goddamn time.

Just laid there and I stuck it in and worked.

My heart, coming so close to the dream

and she laid there, later to say, “Don’t

try to fuck me when I’m asleep” and I had

no more words, walked out on the porch

and watched the street lights

and cars.  All the music little purple fires

in the ends of my fingers.  she said

listening to me read something to my best

friend, “Why not call your first book:

THE BOOK OF SHIT.’

It was a joke, we all laughed.

She could not understand

what I was doing and I wrote harder to keep

her away from what was my self, the damage was

already done.  I wanted to keep a small part

for myself, some place where i could be pure.

Finally, waking up to orange juice and glucose

after 21 days of shock treatments for an anxiety

reaction, which means I wound up huddled behind

a door afraid to open it to anyone.  Anyway it worked.

I didn’t care about a thing.

Thorazine and hands moving in my dreams.

All that was left were the words.

All that was left was the part I had kept

for myself, the poems: THE BOOK OF SHIT.

Class of ’61.