WEBVTT

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This is another poem from our
childhood, actually Jerry's

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and mine.

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We grew up in Newark, New
Jersey, which was, as you know,

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first of the suburban
destroyed cities in America,

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I guess you would put it.

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It's called "Blackstone".

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Blackstone was a great magician
that we were taken to see.

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And I guess the rest is
pretty self-explanatory.

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"Blackstone, when
Blackstone the magician

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cut a woman in half in
the Branford theater,

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near the famous Lincoln
statue and already

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partway down the chute Newark,
he used a gigantic buzz saw.

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And the woman let out a shriek
that out-shrieked the whirling

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blade and drilled directly
into the void of our little boy

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crotches.

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That must be when we learned
that real men were supposed

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to hurt women, make them cry,
then leave them, because we

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saw the blade go in, right in.

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Her waist was bare, look.

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And so in her silvery
garlanded bra, shining,

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were her breasts around
silvery, garlanded tops

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of breasts shining, which
must be when we went insane

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and were sent to drive
our culture insane.

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Show me your breasts, please.

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Shame on you, hide
your breasts, shame.

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Nothing else mattered, just
silvery garlanded breasts.

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And still she shrieked.

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The blade was still going
in under her breasts.

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And nothing else mattered.

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Oh, Branford theater, with your
scabby plaster and threadbare

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scrim, you didn't matter.

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And Newark, your tax base
oozing away to the suburbs,

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you didn't matter, nor your
government by corruption

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or swelling slums.

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You were invisible now.

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Those breasts had made you,
before our eyes, vanish.

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As Blackstone would make doves,
then a horse before our eyes

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vanish.

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As at the end,
factories and business

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from our vanquished
city would vanish.

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Oh Blackstone,
gesturing, conjuring

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with your looming,
piercing glare,

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oh, gleaming hurtling
blade, oh, drawn

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out scream, oh, perfect
thrilling arc of pain."

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