Daye 45 / Flying Saucers Rock 'N' Roll

i
The sheets were soaking
wet pajama tops sticking to hot belly
i rolled over and jimmied my flashlight
from its safety slot between the mattress and the boxspring
ha! my belly was still a deep prickly pink
it burned my hand just to touch
i pressed the flashlight into my palm to make
a red x-ray halo 'round my fingers
i leaned over the bed to fish for my tuning fork
and my stethoscope
but the sudden movement made me dizzy
i tried to get my thoughts moving in a cold stream
so i could tell them everything when they got home
logic was moving in a wave of blue glass balls
the bed was wet
my hair was damp
but my body was still hot
it meant i didn't sweat the fever out
it might mean a warm tea enema later on
that slick tube up my bottom
the atmosphere was falling apart
amoeba shapes started rushing
where was my raygun?

someone was in my bedroom
it wasn't mommy cause they were still at the hospital
it was something female like the amana refrigerator lady
only with the silky red face of a fox
her big head rocked
no flash at all beamed from her glass eyes
she was offering up a tray of gleaming objects
miniature diver's tools
luminous disks
and a black plastic whistle the shape of a cigar
there were sharp hairy jewels and headphones connected with the source of the music
the low fender whine
but I went for that whistle
my mouth was all shiny and burny
i could barely puff 'cause i was crying so hard but i tried and tried 'til i did
and the shine pulled me right out of the heat into cool greyfalling back into a sea of black curtain.

stefanie died
they came home real late
their eyes were red from crying but not as red as my belly
like a true child I was sinister enough to interrupt their grief by discharging symptoms
belly smeared with pin pricks
sickly sulphur ooze and the fear of littered space behind my eyes
the doctor said it was scarlet fever
i knew better
he quarantined me
and sister had to look at me thru a telescope

time warped
my dresses shrunk
it was 1957
stefanie was dead
rock 'n' roll was rising and I had seen my first ufo
it was shaped like an eleven-year-old girl with colorless eyes.

they gave me her comic books and her iceskates but I wouldn't touch them
they had her yellow energy spread all over them
i just laid there sliding my fingers around my whistle
it had a real comforting texture like the back of a boy's neck
i laid there for years
the sheets developed the spinal eye they used to call my back
i laid there and listened for that future music
to lull me outta this separate limbo called childhood

ii
mama said i was born old
i always had this absolute swagger about the future
and a morbid foto-recall of the past
i could remember exactly how it felt in the womb
snow was falling
jimi hendrix was singing are you experienced?
i was turning on a spit in a sea of vomit cleanser
a wall of sound intoxicating rhythm
and as close as my face
a breath
a session of hesitation
and the bells
the troops
the 21-gun salute
the push into promise
and that first long animal cry of love like a fender whine

destiny plagued me
i never slept
I laid
and watched the night unravel like the future
music crystallized like snowflakes
gradually the entire storm
guitar necks sticking out of the ground like bayonets
the war between sounds
alexander coming to conquer with a fender and a saucer
i knew it was coming and I wanted to be in on it
i knew it came and went and i wasn't in on it.

i was at this party
all I knew was james brown and somebody put on "third stone from the sun"
everybody was looking at me
so I pulled out my whistle
the one shaped like a cigar with black pick-ups
by the end of "foxy lady" it was pure amp damage
they were banging their pates into the plaster but i was laughing hysterically
the ones who ripped their wigs fascinated me the most
to watch these bald and slick comet shapes rushing the walls
it reminded me of something
but i was too giddy to get my mind shining
i wasn't in on it
wasn't in on it
i couldn't stand it
i wasn't born to be a spectator

it was 1966 '67 '68
every place i went it was somebody else
i could-not-live-today
too plugged into sanguine rhythms past and the silver video we call future
here i come future
coming to get ya
i see it all moving on an immense yellow highway
they come on like trumpets and violins
cars
armies of cars that move off the ground
glowing cigar shapes
and the radio just pumps like a fist
brick roads
turnpikesthey drive me insane 'cause I can see what's coming
elp
elo
nothing real 'cept ufo
got to be royal rock warfare cause it's sitting in limbo
not what was and not what will be
rock got to move out of its stagnant moment
pray for something bubbling under the sky's canopy to rip open and rush like gas

i was the same old party
i put the whistle on the tray
it went reeling
It was happening again
i was overcome but it didn't matter
i just did what the rest of my gggg-generation did
didn't duck heads up and get creamed by the '60s
everything that happened it was somebody else.

"this your wristwatch?"
"no"
"you an artist by any chance?"
"no"
"freelance?"
"no"

no-no-no-no-monotonous bells long bong
i looked at jimi hendrix's hands
they were so immense they could push a face thru wax
etch and spear spinal stars in the noir crayola field we call sky
'scuse me!
i tripped and dropped my hand in his
it la la la landed like an insect nest and all the red wire spiders jabbed in his flesh like g-strings
it was easy to transform everything into guitar strings
hair
grass
fingers illuminated calligraphy
everything was something else
a sound was a room
a spongy layer of flesh
a trampoline of tissue
rubberish tissue
a laugh
a kiss . . .

i had to get out
i got to get out
i got out
trunk up the used drapery
gonna be a new party
children will go to the party
roll down a snowbank
eject a floodlight and the new experience will be totally ecstatic
someone's destiny will be his diver's tool that makes the incision in his chest and relax his fist over the heart and
pump it pump it thru the veins of space
the soul-ar radio breaking into snowflake light
hammering harmonics from the heart of a boy with colorless eyes
whose neck is the texture of the back of a whistle

blow-blow
the diaphragm is such-a-kinky machine
i got to get out of bed
the walls are damp and the masking tape is curling
magazine pictures of stratacasters
telecasters
jazz masters and ariel views of saucer-shaped pits slide to the floor
coffee
cigarettes
the moves of mama early in the morning
i water the cactus
from my sixth floor window I can see another window
a boy is smiling and to my right no clouds, no sun, no stones, no nothing
just a host of black cigar shapes whining in the pink skin sky
~ Patti Smith