Robert Creeley - Oh Max lyrics
Oh Max for Max Finstein 1. Dumba** clunk plane "American Airlines" (well-named) waits at gate for hours while friend in Nevada's burned to ash. The rabbi won't be back till Sunday. Business lumbers on in cheapsh** world of fake commerce, buy and sell, what today, what tomorrow. Friend's dead out of it, won't be back to pay phoney dues. The best conman in country's gone and you're left in plane's metal tube squeezed out of people's pockets, pennies it's made of, big bucks, nickels, dimes all the same. You won't understand it's forever one time, just one time you get to play, go for broke, forever, like oldtime musicians, Thelonious, Bud Powell, Bird's horn with the chewed-through reed, Jamaica Plain in the 40s Izzy Ort's, The Savoy. Hi Hat's now gas station. It goes fast, Scramble it, make an omelet out of it, for the hell of it. Eat these sad pieces. Say it's paper you wrote the world on and guy's got gun to your head go on, he says, eat it... You can't take it back. It's gone. Max's dead. 2. What's memory's agency- why so much matter. Better remember all one can forever never, never forget. We met in Boston, 1947, he was out of jail and just married, lived in a sort of hotel-like room off Washington Street, all the lights on, a lot of them. I never got to know her well, Ina, but his daughter Rachel I can think of now, when she was 8, stayed with us, Placitas, wanted bicycle, big open-faced kid, loved Max, her father, who, in his own fragile way, was good to her. In and out of time, first Boston, New York later then he showed up in N.M., as I was leaving, 1956 had the rent still paid for three weeks on "The Rose Covered Cottage" in Ranchos (where sheep ambled o'er bridge) so we stayed, worked the street, like they say, lived on nothing. Fast flashes the women who love him, Rena, Joyce, Max, the mensch, makes poverty almost fun, hangs on edge, keeps traveling. Israel they catch him, he told me, lifting a bottle of scotch at the airport, tch, tch, let him stay (I now think) 'cause he wants to. Lives on kibbutz. So back to New Mexico, goyims' Israel sans the plan save Max's ("Kansas City," "Terre Haute") New Buffalo (friend told me he yesterday saw that on bus placard and though, that's it! Max's place). People and people and people. Buddy, Wuzza, Si Perkoff, and Sascha, Big John C., and Elaine, the kids. Joel and Gil, LeRoi, Cubby, back and back to the curious end where it bends away into nowhere or Christmas he's in the army, has come home, and father, in old South Station, turns him in as deserter, ashamed, ashamed of his son. Or the man Max then kid with his papers met nightly at Summer Street subway entrances on Xmas he give him a dime for a tip... No, old man, your son was not wrong. "America" just a vagueness, another place, works for nothing, gets along. 3 In air there's nowhere enough not here, nothing left to speak to but you'll know as plane begins its descent, like they say, it was the place where you were, Santa Fe (holy fire) with mountains of blood. 4 Can't leave, never could, without more, just one more for the road. Time to go makes me stay- Max, be happy, be good, broken brother, my man, useless words now forever.