I wrote a lot of strange poems, I would say.
I'll read this poem.
I have never read this poem in public before.
This is called "A Little Old Funky Homeric Blues for Herm."
It's based on the "Homeric Hymn for Hermes,"
which was an anonymous poem of ancient Greece.
It's called "homeric" because although it probably
wasn't written by Homer, whoever he was,
it's written in his manner, with lots
of extended similes and repeated epithets and things like that.
It tells the story of Hermes overcoming
Apollo in the contest to see which was the best musician,
and how Hermes tricked Apollo out of his herd of cattle,
I think, of goats.
But it puts it in contemporary language,
the idiom of Afro-American people in this country
in the '30s and '40s.
I won't try to read it as they would pronounce it
because I can't, but I'll do--
but the language itself is relatively authentic, I think.
There are words in here that you won't understand.
"Knock off that hincty blowing, you Megarians.
I got a new beat, mellow and melic like warm, man.
I sing of heisty Herm.
'Twas was early dawn when somebody smashed the stars
and hard-nosed Herm was born.
He lay there on his cot a while, then
he raised up and said, "Ma--"" that's Maybelline--
""Ma, who's my daddy?"
"Him," snorted Maybelline.
"Yeah, but who is he?"
"He come in the white cloud."
"Ha!
I knows the kind.
Them so big balled."
"Gully-low he was, sure enough.
He live up Sugar Hill, up some hill somewhere,
that's all I heard.
I know that."
And hero Herm he laughed and looked in the glass
and smarmed to himself, an eight rock mama and an ofay pop.
Hey man, you've got something coming sure.
Then the window flashed with curious light.
"Ma, Ma, what's that?"
"Oh, just a car going by."
"Car?
What kind of car?"
"Hmm, it looked like a Jaguar."
Horrid Herm flaked out in a fake of sleep,
but then rose up, unseen, and out the door,
down the dark hall where he found
a rusty pipe which cried out, "no, no, I too
am an object of this world."
But hectic Herm, he said, "bah, you nothing now."
And he killed it with one blow, and bent it,
and then and there, all by himself,
invented the tenor sax.
Oh, hippocrine Herm, he blew, he strutted, he
made the walls fall down and then fall up again,
with only 96 bars of hermetic swan-shaped blues, and bowed
and departed.
Down the stairs, down the block, past fizz and fuzz.
You mess with me, baby, I bite your ass.
Down Fifth and down and down, till there it stood,
the great red Jag, tethered right outside the pad
of Apollonio.
Appollonio, the brave, fair, friend to all, talented,
liberal, who played all day on his symphony orchestra.
Hoodoo Herm, he fingered the secret switch
and drove that Jag like a fist of fire across the park,
up Amsterdam, to a cave on Morningside Heights.
Wham, it was hidden.
Hieratic Herm sat down and pulled his pud,
and then and there, all by himself,
invented man's sacrificial relationship to fate.
Twelve times he jetted to the twelve prophets in order.
Handsome Lake, Simon Kimbaugh, John Wilson, Andre Matswa,
Muana Lesa, Kanakuk, Marcus Garvey, Enoch Mgijima,
Wodziwob, Dr. George, Isatai, Makandal,
and bowed and said, "I done what you told me."
Then home and slipped through the keyhole
in the form of a flatted seventh, back to the cot.
Maybellene cried, "where you been, child?"
But Holy Herm, "nowheres.
How you expect a little newborn baby going to go?"
Then Maybelline looked wise, "little fucker, I knows you.
The day that big man from up yonder stuck his thing in me,
he got a heap of trouble on the world."
Then hijacker Herm, he snuggled in his rildy
and answered, "Ma, you's quaker oats.
Now listen, ain't you heard about status yet?
It's like powerful, like being on top
but with class, no sweat, see?
And I aim to get me some.
If nobody, meaning that Mr. Big on the Hill, give it to me,
I gets it any way.
That's all.
Any way I can.
Don't you worry none.
I blowing real sharp on this gig already."
And he fell asleep, snuffling and snoring.
Then came the fuzz with Apollonio to wake him up.
"Boy, where'd you stash that Jag?"
"Jag?
Jag?
I don't know nothing about--" But Apollonio
lifted him and shook him hard, and here's
where handy Herm did his cleverest,
for he farted juicily inside his diaper
and topped it with a sneeze.
Awed Apollonio dropped him like a toad.
Yet at last they agreed to submit the matter
to the man on the hill, who smiled
when he heard of heretical Herm and the big red Jag.
Smiled and said, "you've got to give it back."
And haunted Herm said, "shucks."
And he said, "dadgumit."
But what could he do?
Something tied his tongue.
He was like a child.
He was a child.
He had to give it back.
So haywire Herm and affable Apollonio
trucked down the avenue together until, after a ways, Herm
unslung his horn, the golden tenor, and with
a groan and a squeal, popped out to changes
on Cora Banty's Ride.
And Apollonio's blond wig stood up,
and he jigged, he twitched, he chuckled, and he prespired.
And at last, he leaped and cried, "oh man, I dig you!
Teach me to play that thing."
"What?" said hispid Herm.
"You'd grunch and groan?
You'd dirty them fingers so lily white?"
"I got to, man.
I got to.
Give me that beat again," cried Apollonio,
down on his knees and rocking.
"What it worth to you?"
"Anything, anything.
Take my Jag, take my electronic wristwatch,
I got to have that horn.
Oh Herm, we are brothers now."
And so hilarious Herm went home again, grinning and gloating.
But Maybelline, she said, "you too big for your britches, boy.
They're going to fix you yet.
Prince of thieves, they calls you.
Maybe you is and maybe you ain't, but you know
what they're going to make you?
Prince of storekeepers, that's what.
Prince of nickels and dimes, Prince of gouging and niggling.
You're going to be a rat just like them, Little Prince,
you hear?
Squeezing and scrambling and squawking just like them.
Just like them.
And the very best name they ever going to call you
is Psychopompos."
"Shit," said homunculus Herm."
[LAUGHS]
[APPLAUSE]
Psychopompos, in case you haven't studied Greek,
is the person who leads the--