Pub Crawl: A Poem of Philadelphia

By Ernest Yates

This is Ernest Yates’s twelfth volume of poems and the ninth volume in an ongoing series based on his wanderings through the streets of Philadelphia.

Part Melville, part Joyce, part Bash travel diary and part Barthesian semiotics, this account of a poet’s journey through the wilderness of postindustrial Philadelphia is much, much more a search for freedom, God, love, community, and home; a meditation on the city’s and nation’s history and on the poet’s own life; a tentative definition of poetic form; and an argument concerning the relationship between poetry and life. Emerson and Stevens?but also Brooks, Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Lorde?would be smiling.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781984563422

Ernest Yates

Born in Ancon, Panama, and raised in New Orleans, Ernest Yates obtained a doctorate in English from the University of Pennsylvania. He has lived and worked in the Philadelphia area for fifty years. Mr. Yates has published poetry in dozens of literary magazines and journals, and has won the Grand Prize of the Pennsylvania Poetry Society, among other poetry awards. For further information, please consult Mr. Yates’s website? ernestyates.com

Book preview

Copyright © 2019 by Ernest Yates.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2018912975

ISBN:                  Hardcover                       978-1-9845-6344-6

Softcover                        978-1-9845-6343-9

                            eBook                              978-1-9845-6342-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 02/13/2019

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CONTENTS

Key To Atchisen’s Itinerary

Atchisen's Itinerary

Prologue: Small Talk

I.   FURTHER BEYOND

From FINNIGAN’S WAKE

to SFÂNTA TREIME BISERICA ORTODOXÅ ROMÂNÅ

II.   SOMETHING ABOUT DESIRE

From SFÂNTA TREIME BISERICA ORTODOXÅ ROMÂNÅ

to THE BARBARY

III.   SOMETHING ABOUT WORDS

From THE BARBARY

to the old SCHMIDT’S BREWERY (defunct)

IV.   SOMETHING ABOUT SONG

From the old SCHMIDT’S BREWERY

to ORTLIEB’S JAZZ HAUS

V.   IT’S A POOR SORT OF DRUNKENNESS

From ORTLIEB’S JAZZ HAUS

to the parking lot of AIR CON FILTER SALES AND SERVICE

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

VII.   WHEN THE WHIRLWINDS PASS

From the parking lot of AIR CON FILTER SALES AND SERVICE

to ST. PETER THE APOSTLE CHURCH

Epilogue

To Jacqueline

KEY TO ATCHISEN’S ITINERARY

SERVERS OF THE SPIRIT

3. SFÂNTA TREIME BISERICA ORTODOXÅ ROMÂNÅ

11. ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH OF ST. AGNES

12. ST. JOHN NEPOMUCENE

13. ST. MICHAEL’S RUSSIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH

15. ST. ANDREW’S ORTHODOX CHURCH

16. ST. NICHOLAS EASTERN ORTHODOX CHURCH

17. NURSERY MISSIONARY SISTERS CONVENT

18. UKRAINIAN CATHOLIC CHURCH

19. BAPTIST CHURCH

20. ST. PETER THE APOSTLE CHURCH

23. SECONDA IGLESIA CRISTIANA MISIONARIA

24. ST. JOHN’S UNITED METHODIST CHURCH

KEY TO ATCHISEN’S ITINERARY, CONT.

SERVERS OF SPIRITS

1. FINNIGAN’S WAKE

2. DAVE’S

4. SPORTS CAFÉ LOUNGE

5. BAJA BEACH CLUB

6. SOUTH BEACH CLUB

7. THE BARBARY

8. STANLEY’S TAVERN

9. BULL’S HEAD INN

10. ORTLIEB’S JAZZ HAUS

14. R.U.B.A. CLUB

21. W&J BAR

22. PERNITSKY’S BAR

25. POOR HENRY’S BREWERY

+ the old SCHMIDT’S BREWERY

59089.png AIR CON FILTER SALES AND SERVICE (parking lot)

57120.png35557.png

PUB CRAWL

SMALL TALK

Prologue: Small Talk

Imagine, as you hear this,

that all clocks are stilled;

that the day’s urgent

business is buffoonery—

—haphazard—

conducted by clowns.

The world seems steeped in languor.

But you and i both see

a robin leaping on a trimmed lawn.

A car at the corner

accelerates to beat a yellow light.

A maple leaf careens toward

brittleness on earth.

I walk with you hand in hand, my dream—

my next song will be longer.

I.

FURTHER BEYOND

From FINNIGAN’S WAKE

to SFÂNTA TREIME BISERICA ORTODOXÅ ROMÂNÅ

AMERICA, TE QUIERO

Thirsty from playing in Panama’s sun

i would stand before the icebox door

and call her—

America, leche!

And she would come, cantering, to the kitchen.

Like a black mare, her hair

tied back in a red kerchief,

big-boned, bosomed, hipped,

angular elbows and knees jutting

beyond her calico dress.

America, agua!

And she would come.

Originally from so far back in the hills of the Zone

my mother had to instruct her in

the manipulation of doorknobs,

she knew her way around by then.

At my call, she would drop

sponge, rag, broom, mop,

and canter to the kitchen, bantering

in a language that i did not understand,

the language of adults,

to give me drink.

"America, quiero leche!

America, quiero agua!

America, …"

Bourbon, baby, make it straight.

No rocks, no water.

I want to taste it clear and sharp.

For, you see, i myself have grown,

cut my eyeteeth, and come north.

The world is old and large, i’ve learned—too old,

and too large

to care when you’re thirsty,

to hear when you cry out.

And now, from deep down in my cups,

my own sparkling cups

bought and paid for, many times,

i wish that i could tell you

TRUTH in our common tongue

(that old familiar banter

that you would not miss)—

i miss you now, America.

Second day, fourth month,

one thousand nine hundred ninety-ninth year of

our Common Era,

i stand at the corner of 3rd Street and Spring Garden

and look west. Fair noontime sky, a dozen

cloud puffs

stir—white impurities defacing profound

blue depths.

Recessed from the street, like a grid the facade of

SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION—

seven rows

of plate glass windows set in

russet panels—

hides from view the taller, narrower towers of center city.

No one to accompany me, no one comes to say good-bye.

Long miles ahead,

down narrow roads, past modest buildings

and humble shops—

now in my mind the city hovers like a half-formed dream.

Strapped to one wrist, an audio recorder fits neatly in

a cupped palm.

DOORWAY

This was no ordinary passage to the stars,

but a modest step through a portal meant to be

available to anyone who paused,

considering a while the dusky room beyond.

There one would muse under dimmed chandeliers,

among shadowy outlines of stuffed and ancient chairs,

upon a dark tableau, mahogany and unpolished brass,

bric-a-brac of an old chateau

illumined through a window by the moon.

Cold hearth and worn settee recall a time

gemütlicher than this, gathering its meaning by

the gilded ornaments and furnishings of absence.

Once passed, the doorway was mere painted frame

but inconceivable to pass again.

For there, across the threshold of the greatest gift,

alone amid the dark and silence one would move,

discovering desire and a word for love,

a word for courage, and a multitude for pain.

Eager for this afternoon’s adventure, yet i delay a moment for

a drink …

in that most dreary of nearby watering holes,

that den of Irish adolescence on the make,

FINNIGAN’S WAKE.

I’ve always delighted in the spontaneous

and slapdash,

in the aesthetic laxity that challenges authority,

undermines more scrupulous

standards of beauty,

and recklessly attempts a shortcut directly to

sublimity itself …

as if we could dispense with conventions like harmony,

unity, symmetry, and take the universe’s awe-inspiring

mystery

by surprise—all its grandeur,

all its dust.

For what else do we mortals know besides

desire and suffering; and what else, in all our

damning ignorance,

could inspire the thought of grandeur if not

that same desire,

that same suffering—as though we citizens could never see

ourselves as dust, and so are eternally constrained despite

the evidence

to see ourselves as grand; in spite of all the compelling

evidence,

to see this squalid world as grand,

and thereby ease the suffering in our hearts.

Therefore, a drink!

A VALEDICTION

Say that our bodies will be broken, and stone

become our hearts; that our souls shall shrivel

and dry like leaves in an autumn wind;

that once divided from each other, we

shall always be alone, a part of us

always lamenting that wholeness we felt

before our old lives suddenly were burst.

Was our love, then, frivolous and untrue?

a summer’s play? compared to years of sorrow,

a brief and, in the end, pointless interlude?

At Teotihuacan, to demonstrate

their wares, the Indians play flutes of clay

among the ancient Toltec pyramids.

Primitive melodies from peddlers’ pipes

rise up to haunt the limestone altars where,

two thousand years ago, bodies were broken

and bled in order to propitiate

cruel gods. For this the plaster-covered stone

was drenched with the blood of men, so that

commerce and agriculture might be blessed.

The stones, even in ruins, are real enough,

and a desert wind still withers the leaves;

it is the piping, though, that i recall—

that fearsome, haunting sound, that brutal blend

of earth and air, that music charged with the grit

of western deserts where sidewinders writhe

and with the flourish of a plunging hawk.

The pipe like a plumed serpent sounds our fate,

Quetzalcoatl, never to return,

exacting a perpetual goodbye.

FINNIGAN’S—an ersatz Irish pub where

neon script

in windows spells out names of best-selling beers,

and where the would-be trendy,

hip and worldly-wise,

nurse drinks around a circular bar.

Even my friend Gary,

who will problem drink in any pub,

seldom chooses to drink in

this charmless place.

If Li Po lost his way en route to

the Three Gorges

and whimsically chose to stop in, he would probably resolve

never again to set foot in

this juice house.

What’s taking that bartender so long,

he might ask,

as he once did about a wineseller …

but that wouldn’t be his only complaint.

Odor of beer,

cigarettes, bacon, and burgers;

vinyl décor;

and the cloying friendliness of the bartender and clientele

would all have added to his distaste.

Unsociable, i

sit alone at a scarred wooden table, flag

a waitress,

and order the only available cabernet.

FOUR FACES IN A WINEGLASS

Compared to you, that vase of daisies cuts

but coldly to the tawny cloth.

Those flower-flakes are love foregone,

of nature like a finished poem;

the clipped sprouts drink

until they die. You stand

seemingly as trim and still,

half an hourglass upturned

but nowhere for the sand to run;

and yet your stem thrusts upward

from its curving, contoured base,

and your cup is rounded to

a widdershins and deasil swirl,

that swivel of a woman’s hips

as, perched on thinner thighs, she lopes.

I lift you like a chalice where you glow

beneath a lamp, to where

the purple, pungent wine contains

distortions of my face;

a second face, of daisies rearranged;

another, like a gruesome mask,

distant as the moon’s white chill;

and last, my sweetheart’s fair and smiling face.

Whether our world be fragments, or whether our world be

whole,

we can always only know it in

dreams.

This neighborhood called Northern Liberties contains

a dozen churches and as many saloons within

its one square mile.

I would visit them all, and study them all, and yet sense

something

always and ever greater than what i see.

It may be God, it may be spirit, a vanished culture

or THE FAIRMOUNT BAR …

but something always beyond what i see.

So PLUS ULTRA!

as Henry Chapman Mercer said,

who built his own castle in Bucks County out of

poured concrete,

and crowded walls of each quirky room with

decorative tiles

of his own painstaking manufacture.

Those rooms contain Mercer’s collections of rare books,

skulls on mantels,

etchings, pottery, paintings, antiquated maps,

obsolete tools,

ancient ceramic shards with cuneiform inscriptions.

But more than anything else, Mercer displayed

the words PLUS ULTRA—

engraved, embossed, printed, painted, sculpted,

etched and scratched

on tiles boldly exhibited

above many a fireplace.

Cartographers

of the Middle Ages often printed

NE PLUS ULTRA—

not further beyond—on those segments of their maps

representing the Atlantic.

According to legend,

the phrase was also inscribed on the so-called

Pillars of Hercules,

headlands forming the strait of Gibraltar,

as both proscription and ominously

grim warning:

do not venture into the great Sea of Darkness.

If you do,

beware the hideous monsters lurking there.

And indeed, hideous monsters were often sketched breaking above

treacherous waves

in the Atlantic of their maps:

narwhals, demons,

octopi, serpents, dragons.

Mercer reversed both proscription

and warning,

turning them into injunction and consolation:

PLUS ULTRA.

Further beyond. And given our mortal limitations,

for us there is always a further beyond.

It could be God;

but Mercer meant that any man or woman who,

like Columbus,

conquered fear and challenged superstitious prohibitions,

could illuminate the Sea of Darkness and discover

authentic new worlds.

Accept this as your existential challenge and your blessing,

Mercer would say.

Wherever you are now, and wherever you desire to be,

this is your human duty and your gift:

go forth and be free.

MARDI DOUX DOUX DOUX ET GRAS

I pick my way through litter at the end of a parade.

The street’s a world of color, palette of

a pagan god whose pageantry consists

of carnival display, to show

what lagniappe can be made of crepe

in moonlight, underneath flambeaux.

A song coincidently rises in my heart

or in the streets; my mind’s not real

except as it reflects desire

stemming from this moment in

an iridescent festival of sound.

Sweet Tuesday, there is no guilt

i can imagine that can rival

the cold sweat of this can of beer

that sticks, tenacious, to my palm.

Sweet Tuesday, there is no fear that can deter

me from the next step i know to take,

and damn perspective to priests.

Sweet Tuesday, Epiphany revealed

no charm so fair

that it could tempt me from

this present, keen, carnal cell.

Fat Tuesday, i confess there is

no spoken or written word,

either of tenderness or firmness,

that can satisfy me like a song uplifted

in a plain and unpretentious voice

boldly expressing desire.

Perhaps nothing’s more American, and more fraught with risk,

than Mercer’s catchphrase.

It recalls Jefferson’s formula that God has ordained

life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as gift to

humankind.

Mercer has simply extended this principle of Jefferson’s

political theory

into a romantic, quasi-divine sanction

of curiosity, of innovation.

PLUS ULTRA, indeed.

Whatever is beyond myself

i am bound to seek,

whether it be ORTLIEB’S, or evil,

the old SCHMIDT’S BREWERY, or good,

saloons, churches, crimes,

whatever makes Northern Liberties what it is—

eyesore,

figure of transcendent beauty,

God or Satan beyond a chain-link fence,

the blatantly vague,

the endless, boundless mystery.

THREE SPANGLES

Your tchack tchack tchack conveys

ferocious memories of that sordid world

in which, by day, you spend your time

assaulting insects for a living;

and by the robin’s tjeep tjeep tjeep

in and of the cool of this summer evening

you express your spirit’s acquiescence;

and then there is that cardinal call

by which you sing the long and lazy

evocations of desire—

a whooit whooit whooit

for tomorrow, and what your mating brings.

My neighbor says he wants to get an air gun,

put a stop to all your racket, and get some sleep;

but i appreciate your mockeries,

that allow me to forget

the mud and muttering of my life.

I see your silhouette on my antenna.

Your song is like three spangles

dangled in the evening sky;

three stars bang-bang-bang

in sequence like Orion’s belt;

three sequins on a black silk gown.

At the bar

a man’s falsetto voice prompts a burst of laughter,

joke’s crack dissolving in hubbub and smoke.

I plot my journey.

At Bodine and Brown, Sfânta Treime’s

the nearest church.

Starting there and ending who knows where,

i’ll track not only churches

but ragtag remnants

of the Liberties’ industrial past:

factories,

breweries, tanneries, workshops, warehouses

still scattered among tumbledown homes;

sports bars,

bistros, nightclubs, taverns, taprooms,

saloons

hunkering and unknown to all but alcoholic die-hards.

Old but still eager, chromium alloy

implants for hips,

orthotic inserts in my shoes, i have this short

pick-me-up of wine

for all the impetus i need.

April sky cerulean with flounces,

tree buds

on the verge of bursting, an emptiness of

expectation

aches against the inside of my ribs, …

Northern Liberties is waiting.

SCREEN PORCH

Ah, on a summer night, and stars

speckle and blaze pinholes of light

in black firmament’s pocked shell.

Arcturus is declining, Vega dazzles from on high,

and the dragon frolicking on the big bear’s back

wraps Polaris like a gift

posted to Diana’s nymphs and the daughters of Atlas.

White, its plains the color of bruise,

a gibbous moon bathes the hills black green.

Birch and bulky oak raise canopies above earth,

full, rounded forms shadowing the rise,

ragged branches ruffling with each breeze.

Footsteps scrape stones of a distant farmer’s stair,

then fall away, voices of strangers passing.

Grass smells sweet of dew and heavy, vegetal decay.

Behind me, shutters wide, windows blacker than sky,

my home is dark and silent as a new-spun cocoon.

After the disasters

of this past century, maybe the world this close to

a new millennium

can anticipate a century of peace

in which advanced technology holds forth

a promise

of greater prosperity and dignity for

all humankind,

and more peaceful intercourse among nations. I doubt it.

But yesterday Canada established the region of

Nunavit

out of the Northwest Territories.

Last week

Piccard and Jones circumnavigated

the globe in a hot-air balloon.

Only last month

Nigeria chose a new president

Obasanjo

in its first election since 1983;

Crown Prince Abdullah became King of Jordan,

and Jammu

witnessed the revival of the Democratic

Janata Dal Party.

Such changes declare only that the world changes,

but may also show that men don’t have to be the mad

bloodthirsty butchers

we’ve proven to be in the past, creatures of deliberate

cruelty.

No no, our capacity for change reveals nothing

if not our potential to pursue

beauty and good

beyond what we knew before, instilled with

fiery passion

to follow any free-chosen path.

So i must hold wide open

both mind and eye

as i wander through Northern Liberties, i must deliberately withhold

final judgment

in order to venture further beyond.

THE FLIP OF THE MOON

How can it just hang there, the moon …

impassive as a silver dollar stopped

at the height of its toss, heedless of an outcome.

It seems that it must always shine regardless

of the fate-filled night and doom of sleep—

is shining now on bloodless bodies sprawled

in battle’s aftermath; and shining now

on bodies half in death and half in wonder

in their dreams: of last connections gone kaput,

machines awry and nature skewed, a steady plash

of blood drops in the drum and drone of towns,

and the veins of pavements glinting white.

Does it mock us in our dreams?

Does it take some heartless, adolescent glee

in the shift of emotions, and desires that end,

relishing our pain through an arrogant, bright grin?

Or on the dark side is it truly stone,

obedient to nature’s laws and oracle

to men, disaster’s ever-silent voice,

suspended in our heavens in order to exact

a last full measure of devotion

until all the words of song are coined.

Outside FINNIGAN’S turn left, and left again.

Bodine Street?

In three blocks this crumbling alley veers from gaudiness to

desolation,

and then from desolation to the momentary cheer

of a few restored buildings.

The gaudy is SCHEIB

across the alley from FINNIGAN’S.

SCHEIB

will paint your car any color from the gray of its ramshackle two stories

to the lavishness of its giant signs—

signs so loud

they shout their messages as if to drown the constant

roar of traffic

on Spring Garden’s unheeding thoroughfare.

In red, blue, yellow, white, orange,

and purple

they shout QUALITY AT LOW LOW PRICES

SAVE    SAVE

DISCOUNTS NOW AVAILABLE

COMPARE US TO ANY OTHER SHOP

and SAVE.

Less conspicuous among these blaring messages are

the shrill sounds

of scraping, sanding, and polishing machinery

emanating from the depths of

two open garages.

THE BLACK GODDESS

My muse is the woman’s breath

that brushes through moonlit trees.

Dark, she moves darkly, without sound,

except for the rustling of leaves, her clothes.

Clouds curl in her hair, billowing.

Her perfume is the rain, sprinkling about.

Her skin has the texture of freedom, soft and cool,

condensing to shimmering dew.

Body and soul of the blue night,

spare in your favors, be merciful—

for i spend my days in longing

for you, and my days have grown longer.

Without you i’m chained to