d.a. levy, poet (1942-1968)


Cleveland Undercovers

I.

SOMETIMES CITY i walk at dawn
past the trucks parked
on the cold mornings edge
of the old viaduct to look at
the sore mouth of the Cuyahoga
eating and eaten by the dawn
and the city        and i
KNOWING
in the east a new sun is rising
and the grass is growing
on the ashes of the city
where once i was born
walking in the dawn
where once in a shopping center
i slipped into my center
and listened to the others sing
and see-saw something of myself
as they sang of the city,
"What can you expect
when you wake up in the morning
and find a republican tugboat
tied to the foot of your bed."
but that was then and
NOW i am, and do not expect
tomorrow or yesterday today.
instead, i write in ecstasy
and when someone stops to say
"Hey, that's not true!"
i yell backwards,
"For who............and fuck rhyme."
i have a city to cover with lines,
with textured words &
the sweaty brick-flesh images of a
drunken tied-up whorehouse cowtown
sprawling and brawling on its back.

As the lakefront rats
race from rock to rock like medieval monks
race from door to door looking for god
i amuse myself,            looking
for Shu & Ptah or the Heb-Sed Ceremony
in a crystal toilet bowl gives me visions
i paint them El Greco in my head
and toss a few angels in the sky
playing plastic harps that pluck
the strings of the black lake &
the streets with magical names
challenge me..................

if i paint WINDERMERE
on my apartment door like a
Pennsylvania Dutch hex sign
will it keep the angel of death away?

if i etch MAGNOLIA
on the Institute of Music
will the south rise again
as Haitian angels sacrifice chickens
to the music of Hindemith?

if i scratch SCOVILL
on Severance Hall
will George Szell lose his temper
and the cellos pop their strings
in terrified ecstasy?

if i write ERIE
in pastels next to the kitchen sink &
the mushroom stones..will some decrepit
archeologist climb out of the drain
with flint arrowheads or obsidian fig-
urines wrapped in his fat handkerchief?

if i inscribe MEMPHIS
on the bathroom ikon
will i have a protestant illumination
or excremental visions overwhelm me?

my god eye seems to have
no city to see,
i look into the mind of it
and smile knowing
it is young and becoming one
so it doesn't matter If or Why
i still have a city to cover with lines

II.

in the beginning was the cat nation
crying
herring, mussels and irish potatoes
then the white man arrived and
blew up the bridges with baking soda
submarines and they moved to
cincinnati..................after...
the senecas disguised as the iroquois
beat the shit out of them
THEN
thick tongued lisping Mose Ass
Cleaveland arrived.... took a leak in
the swamp before never returning.
the FIRST FREAKS playing craps
with malaria except for a few
hippies moving and grooving into
the HEIGHTS
playing russian roulette
with their pepperpike and salt
shaker testicles.......
wigging it at nights....hanging
their chairs on little pegs

...(Occult Symbolism)...
but they too disappeared leaving
no-thing but money myth
and warped tradition

NOW...
the hillbillies of West 25th etc.
ride their motorcycles through the
Athens Import House while the
Puerto Ricans in Cuban heels watch

THIS is an international episode!

NOW...
out of the Lakewood-Rocky River bottle-
neck..ONLY NOW...How to hold progress
in check? ONLY NOW everyone is waiting
with fife and drum for the British to
BANG BANG BANG
Only Now its the Russians
Only Now its the Chinese
Only Now im not going to play this game anymore.
Do the trustees on the ninth floor of
the county jail see this?

The Parma Police are still waiting for
Pancho Villa / are still waiting for
the confederate army to plant
rebel flags on the southern front
and experimenting with the I Ching as
a means of criminal detection confuses them.
Do the whores on the 7th floor of the
county jail see this?

the neon boozeries blazing in the
raining streets...everyone is inside
everyone in the whole fucking city is
IN
side those bars saloons dancehalls
those dimly darkly lit ahhhhhSin
Palaces..Egg Palaces....Royal Castles
dazzle glitter waterdown B-Girl Barmaids

does anyone see this?

the cruising cavalier in his Lincoln
continental picking up the pale white
fawn on Lorain Ave.............

the herds of elk and caribou become
Karamu dying on 89th street like the
herds of wild deer in leotards once
at Wade Park and the
Bell Telephone operators perform a
surgical Swan Lake at Edgewater Park

Only NOW, they're all up here
white with black fever
black with white fever

to the spade ladies of Doans Corners
i say (only in summer sweat)
"Good Luck Ladies"
spring swing on the front porch
of Euclid Ave........
i say in the snow with teeth of ice
and the lion's breath
"The Lady has pink cheeks,"

the red headed queen swishes across
the street, she could have shaved
but later in the wash it,    will
in the ladies room pouting
"Us girls (?) have to stick together"&
"all they want to do is eat my pussy",
and outside
the university circle police are playing cowboys
"What can you expect?
when the first on the Lake
is a wingless GRIFFIN
and the first they build
is a wooden ZEPHYR
when the NORTH STAR burns
like a gaslit street
and the placks of the CASPIAN
take a walk on the water
and WALK-ON-WATER is a
steamship without a parable.

What can you expect?
when Capt. Perry's huge gun
rapes the English LADY PREVOST
at Put-In-Bay and the EUREKA
is built? or dressed?
in a one whig town
(there is a discrepancy here)
as it sails peacefully into
the San Francisco harbor
OR wrecks suddenly in the
San Francisco gold rush

(there is a discrepancy here)

NOW, that's why there are more poets
in california
it being more romantic than
to be a discrepancy in Cleveland.

What can you expect?
when the sandsucker
SAND MERCHANT sinks to the sand
and a Black Friday on the lakes
claims a quartet of vessels
disappears like the MORNING STAR
when a pigmy fleet drops anchor
at the East Ninth Street Pier
and the lake nights are haunted by
visions of fresh water Flying Dutchmen."

in the fog
the Cleveland Greys become the Cleve-
land Grays as we    RAYS OF RA race down
the Cleveland Cliffs to the flats
and visit        the
radioactive red BETHLEHAM steel sign
looking for Jesus    or the WISE men
delivering potato chips in
cellophane bags as helmets

Short Vincent is the ghetto &
amusement park of the white collar
workers    and
the other weary workers who
stumble home from Gates Mills
to spend the week's wages
on the mysterious Snow White B-Girls
(is not short for Lady Bhu but could be)
getting hung up on the Persian or
middle eastern filigree
of the Suckafellow Bldg....
this of course
is a Happening on Superior Ave.
where everyone is wearing his public
or pubic Library Bibb or
Nickel Plate tote bag as a paper helmet.

III.

For a revolution in the East
a few black masked drawings lie
finished on the floor between
dark coffee and meditation
dissolves empty chairs
3 to the assassins and
drowned a little in the
Pink Catawba, Salzburg, Baden
Vienna                        (NO MORE....)
Only Now,
i should down a Jet Malt
and dance off into the outside
Paul Klee night winds
narrow me, cold me!
shivers a tower'd clock and
(lonely) the lute that echos
over the black lake
while the streets with the magical names
challenge me
the materialistic coprophiles
play one up
and the boys are close
in the back of Jacks......
across the street
the C.C. Trio plays blind in half-
atmosphere    organ eyes with Doublemint
GUM WRAPPER and nose-like
Monks hyena, 'that's wild'
and Miles - "ONE FOR DADDY-O"
'Is that what you wanted Alfred?'
not enough
the Kingsbury Run caterpillars hacked
Hooverville to pieces like a torso
murder and the mounted police in bat
wings guard the Hotel Sheraton
from picketing pacifists
with spears and maces
spades and aces.
i ask
(Who really lives in the King Hotel?)
is new Carters Tavern old Carters
Tavern & are the best brews really
                            at the Harbor Inn?
I'll never know watching the sleighs
& sleds,  cutters of the dead    racing
down EUCLID AVE. again
the pacers and trotters on a snow
falling winter    ERIE STREET
its all OLD STONE CEMETERY
Only Now its
snowflakes chased them into a today
of RANDALLberry sauce
    THISTLEDOWN trumpets &
    CRANWOOD forms for a quarter
the santa claus cat with the golden
horn    winds the narcotic horses
lets them go
i get so excited i swallow my binoculars
forget the lady at my side knitting
new flags for the revolution
i get so excited watching my $2 to show
pony sit down & write a short story
i accidentally break all my fingers &
the lady?    the pony?
oh well, both were unplugged
and Now the track is as clear as
            a shaved box &
i can spend the rest of my lives
lost in the parking lot looking for
the death chariot of the sun.

the city tries to impress me with its
mass, it struggles to encompass me with
shadows, but i know it exists
ONLY because i perceive it...

For the Revolution in the West
a walk around Kams Korners
can make you want to puke Pennys
and take the hashhish out of
your cornflakes.....mourning
if you didnt know....
the bored hoodlums are racing
stolen cars around
Rocky River Reservation's
sinister curves

For the Revolution
at Bay Village they're planning
to dynamite the police station,
roaring motorcycles up the steps to
nirvana...if you didn't know
the bored hoodlums are driving
with their lights out
on the wrong side
of Dover Center Road at night
you'd think it was a quiet
secure little village
waiting
for the Revolution
but the Revolution—is already happen-
ing, and it IS a quiet little village
Only Now, its not waiting.

ACROSS the road from
the Hopkins Airport
i remember experimenting
with YAB-YUM in the front seat
of a volkswagen
watching the lights
like paper lanterns
while the VW sank
in young lovers mud
and i still wonder
if the people in the other cars
were also balling
or only watching the planes
land and get stuck
in the mud.

In the South
the moon goons
half watching technicolor visions
flashing on the drive-in screen
making love in the cinemascope cars
with the automobiles twinkling in
the sky & plunging down Granger Rd.
hill with one foot on the Bible.

the Cloverleaf Drive-In holding
teahands with the Cloverleaf
Speedway holding hands with Play-
Death and the moon splashing blood
on the track
enclosed in a white stockade
the crowds cold on the grey stands
screaming delight while the
drivers are holding hands with Play-Death
the rubber burning blue smoke in
the dusk as the technicolor stock
cars..numbered & decaled,    decorated
in skulls    lap collect around the
track        oil on asphalt
gas on the gravel
splattered at the crowds waiting
for the moon splashing blood
on the track
but death has no winner...not
even the yellow ford scraping the
guard rail with crumpled fenders
complains as the driver is carried
away    with only a broken leg
    and the moon splashing blood
on the track winks at Play-Death
and the crowds are appeased
carrying home popcorn boxes still
half filled.......

IV.

On the other side of the river lies
Ohio City singing and
them people looking
for a rabbit howl or
the queen of hearts in
the forest city
which has been demolished
everything is second growth, and
the wolves are returning like
rimbaud
the rary minkle CLEVELAND CLEVELAND
                                CLEVELAND
They are hanging the indians in public
square again...the wolf packs are
dressed like little red running
off with the morning milkman
sez terry & the pie rats

wrinkle the go dig it
strangle the Huron tutti frutti

its all Elk River
its all (the same) Chagrin River
its all Cuyahoga foga goldfish goddess
sings from the seven cities
its all sings of the vomit and sings
    of the chemicals on the Ohio Canal
and sings of the black locust and
birches and spirit of the oak

its all spinning around
PUBLIC SQUARE
THE ISHTAR TRIANGLE
the conservative poetry forums at
Fenn College....the tired socialists
of 1930 feeding popcorn to the pigeons
    the post office box where we all live
looking out like lepers
the ritual drownings at Shaker Lake
the symbolic sacrifices of conscious-
ness at the Lakewood Civic Auditorium
the sailboats on the lake like the
Luftwaffe over England,
the remains of Fort Huntington
shiver next to the shoreway as
the innerbelt clutches the rag of
                                    the city
LITTLE BUDAPEST....LITTLE SAN JUAN
                                Scranton Ave.
LITTLE ATHENS......LITTLE ISREAL
KAFFU KAFFU JAINA JAINU
everyone jumps from the high level
        EVERYONE
        (protests)
in Brecksville a doe
kicked a 40 grand house
to pieces of sweet potato pie
the Youngstown Mafioso
plugged another brother-hood
for leaving black hands on the
Barberton and Steubenville cathouses.

& a mountain lion from Pennsylvania
wearing Wellington boots
Now begins reading poetry
to the pop-art monuments
in Public Square
to the Soldiers & Sailors Monument
to the brass butt of Tom Johnson
to the plaster head of Mose Ass
                                    Cleaveland
to the terminal tower turning into
a black maze of twisted bodies &
traditional lynchings

(FADED)
when I saw the Senecas
Hurons, Delawares & Chippewas
playing pinochle in the elms
i knew it was indian summer

an Erie outcast with a dead child
dangling from his Yogi Bear wrist
watch        mumbles
"The nights in Cleveland are often lonely."
as he scratches notes in the margins
of a tattered copy of the REALIST

i tell him
"the sun bites the left cheek of the
Illuminating Building."
he sez,
"The nights in Cleveland are often lonely."
and i tell him
"Loneliness is a blind inner eye
and i have a city to build."

the seagulls like marked cards
crap on the deck of the Henry L as
he grabs the Camellia by her black
prow.    as he pulls his mistress down
the liquid street he tells me stories
of the past.

when i saw the Cleveland Indians
crying on home made pennants
i knew it was indian summer.

when the Franklin circle jerks try to
sell me spanish delicatessen delicacies
Franklin Circle drawn around the poor
can not leave or leaves still fall
as autumn trees still
circle what was once a branch of the
cleveland public library
where i got lost as a little book
climber    (losing books)
Only Now im ages older
Only Now im a lost Ohio City Beerhead
Only Now im the angel of death
                            planting seeds that
do not grow in Ohio City hillbilly bars
THINKING
of the leaves falling on the Franklin
Circle where the library now looks
like a mystic auditoium of
Laurel and Hardy Ouspensky EUPHORIA
where the hysterical Historical
St. Johns (could be a faggot)? Church
stands erectionally like the ERECTHEUM
where E.P. painted, 'I AM NOT G.' at
3 A.M. in black paint...used to be the
center of the underground railroad
Now tunneled to Cory Methodist or
contemporary C.O.R.E. & CIVIL
LIBERTIES underground railroad
center of (yes god is a transient)
NOW the leaves are falling into winter
on Murray Hill the mad Italians are
throwing bricks at all the Negroes who
drive through their ghetto (Thats not
being very sociable) DO THE NEGROES
THROW BRICKS AT THE ITALIANS DRIVING
THROUGH THE HOUGH AREA GHETTO?

NOW im driving my chariot through
Shaker Heights where all the mad
psuedo-atheistic jews hideout.
(I'm an atheist who believes in god,
i have to, i am god writes all my
poems) i am god going back to
Ohio City leaves are FALLING into
winter Franklin Circle jerks try to
sell me.
(and who really lives in the Jay Hotel?)

V.

Once the May Company gave
150 monkeys to the Cleveland Zoo
and in 1965 they took it over
in the wake of the beat generation
opened the way to
the tomorrow children
will know how many died
to buy their FREEDOM NOW

Only Now,
Nela Park attains satori
and joins the illuminating cause
Only Now,
the students of Turney Tech
all graduate with E.S.P. honors
and Sunny Acres becomes a
Sunday nudist camp
Only Now everyone who isnt
getting theirs is sitting in the
Standard with their hats on their
laps        ONLY NOW
Leo's Casino is where
the great jazz masters play and one
night when Monk was there rolling
the notes out like peanut butter
and peyote sandwiches..i ate a few
Only to get sick enough to
race downtown to the
Cuyahoga disguised as the Ganges
and build an instant funeral pyre
to throw myself on

Only Now (the revolution is already
happening)    theres the Jazz Temple
(closed via bombing
and the Corner Tavern
and the Esquire Bar
and Leo's Casino is still
around tossing those notes out
at Euclid Ave.

sometimes city
when i walk at night
i slip into your past or future
and there is nothing
except walking at night
and silence

i close my eyes and enter Carters
RED House Boozery seeking
and finding but not understanding
until i reopen my eyes
and find myself in the Blue Jug Jail
of the past
(For the Last Time)
the city changes her face in an
attempt to control me but now i yell
my this lifes name at her.
she crumbles in confusion
and i wonder -
what did i expect to find in this poem
a key?    an answer?

there is only the city as i pretend to
see it and myself as i pretend to see
it
so Now i sip tradition within the
coffee stained walls of the Acropolis
Cafe as the old men play card games
i have not learned,
i sip turkish coffee
and devour honey covered baklava
thinking of should be brandy soaked
and asphodels on the hills
are linked by cloud bridges.
in the coffeehouse
it is not a cathouse of the rising
sun or the deathwagon of the beat
generation, but a bridge of clouds
to a new culture
a bridge to a new sun is rising
and the grass at last is conquering
the ashes of the necropolis...

                        —1964-65


* * * * *

taken from ukanhavyrfuckinciti bak
originally collected and edited by rjs and
published by t.l. kryss, GHOST PRESS CLEVELAND, 1967

all alleged typos were repoduced faithfully by Jesus Crisis
but then some were corrected after comparison with the
original 7 flowers press edition (from 1966)

because d.a. levy rejected copyright as "copyrot"
you may freely replicate and disseminate his work
just keep cool when you copy and credit the cat

* * * * *

To view an inspired video of Jesus Crisis reading levy's work please visit
http://crisisblog.crisischronicles.com/2008/07/25/jesus-da-levytates-on-video.aspx

For more d.a. levy, check out the page clevelandmemory.org has devoted to him.

Another excellent resource for schools (and everyone else) can be found at
www.clevelandpoetryarchive.com

For even more by or about d.a. levy, please check out these volumes: