From: lichter@oahu.cs.ucla.edu (Michael I. Lichter)
Subject: Ai: BOYS AND GIRLS, LENNY BRUCE
Organization: UCLA, Computer Science Department
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 93 04:26:28 GMT

	[This week's other Guest Poet is Ai.  She was born in 1947 
	to a Japanese father and a black-Choctaw-Irish mother, and 
	has lived throughout the Southwest USA.  She often writes
	"in character", her subjects ranging from Salome to Elvis.
	This poem is from her fourth book of poetry, _Fate_, 
	published in 1991 by Houghton Mifflin.]


		BOYS AND GIRLS, LENNY BRUCE,
		OR BACK FROM THE DEAD
			For Willem Dafoe, Ron Vawter,
			and the Wooster Group


		1

		So how's it going, folks?  ---
		broke, exhausted,
		shtuped and duped again.
		You can take it.
		Hell, the meaning of life 
		is taking it,
		in the mouth, the ass, the ---
		o-o-o-h
		it feels so good.
		All together now, stand up, bend over,
		and say a-a-a-h.
		Now sit down, relax, enjoy the show
		that asks the magic question,
		with such a stink, 
		can shit be far behind?
		But no, what you smell is an odor
		of another kind,
		fear, disgust, plus all the things
		you don't want to hear,
		the things that drive you
		from the club,
		a body, a name, and nothng more.
		Alone, on stage, I take
		what you have left behind 
		and wear it like a wide gaudy tie,
		a sight gag 
		for the next show,
		when I'll pick at some other scab
		until it bleeds,
		until that blood turns to wine
		and we get drunk
		on the incomprehensible
		raison d'etre of our lives.


		2

		I address myself
		most often to guys,
		because guys are least
		able to express themselves.
		You women know that.
		You've read it in Ms. and Cosmo.
		I am not a woman hater;
		I'm a woman baiter, I like
		to argue, I like confrontation
		as long as I win,
		but you women make it hard,
		you don['t play by rules
		but by emotions.
		One minute you're devoted,
		the next you've placed 
		an ad in New York Magazine
		that says we're impotent.
		Know what I'm saying?
		You women tell each other things
		a guy does not want told.
		You hold these secret sessions
		over coffee and croissants.
		We disappear in your complaints,
		and in our places, those things
		you've created.
		So guys, I advise let 'em know
		you won't be violated,
		you won't be changed
		into their tormentor.
		You women out there,
		all I'm trying to say,
		in the end,
		we're only bad impersonations
		of our fantasies.
		Just let the accusation waltz be ended,
		not the dance.


		3

		I tried to reach that state of grace
		when performer and audience fuse,
		but each show left a hunger
		even sex couldn't satisfy.
		The closest thing ---
		heroin.  No,
		like the Velvet Underground sang it ---
		her-row-in.
		Shot, snorted, smoked,
		even laced with sugar
		and spread on cereal for breakfast.
		But I was cool, it was cool,
		until one night I thought
		to hell with this moderation shit.
		I took one needle too many
		in that last uncollapsed vein,
		that trail up the cold Himalayas.
		I climbed and climbed
		and finally it was just me
		and the abominable snowman,
		starring in my own Lost Horizon.
		I had ARRIVED
		to Miles playing background trumpet.
		Ice encased me from the neck down;
		the snowman never moved,
		never made a sound,
		maybe he wasn't even there,
		maybe he was the pure air of imagination.
		That's o-x-y-g-e-n.
		I breathed faster 
		and faster, then slow
		and let it all come down,
		but that was just before 
		the floor, the Hollywood
		night and smog, 
		the quick trip to the morgue
		to identify 
		someone I used to know.
		He looked like me, he was
		me,
		but in some other form
		or incarnation,
		my rib cage cut open, my guts
		bluish gray and shriveled,
		liver going black,
		heart too,
		my dick sucked back inside
		as if through a straw or tube.
		I lay like that for days
		while they hunted me for drugs,
		as if prospecting for gold
		and that gold was my disgrace,
		but now I'm back
		to claim my share of whatever's 
		left out there among the ruins.
		And on stage, 
		under the white-hot spotlights,
		give it all I've got.
		So greetings from the reclamation zone.
		Like Christmas, it was bound to come,
		and like some hostage savior,
		I'm here to stay
		till everybody's sanctified
		in laughter.
		That's right, it's not your balls, your pussy,
		or your money
		that I'm after; it's your soul.
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