Big Money

The Camera Eye (46)

walk the streets and walk the streets inquiring of Coca-Cola signs Lucky Strike ads pricetags in storewindows scraps of overheard conversations stray tatters of newsprint yesterday’s headlines sticking out of ashcans

for a set of figures a formula of action an address you don’t quite know you’ve forgotten the number the street may be in Brooklyn a train leaving for somewhere a steamboat whistle stabbing your ears a job chalked up in front of an agency

to do to make there are more lives than walking desperate the streets hurry underdog do make

a speech urging action in the crowded hall after hand-clapping the pats and smiles of others on the platform the scrape of chairs the expectant hush the few coughs during the first stuttering attempt to talk straight tough going the snatch for a slogan they are listening and then the easy climb slogan by slogan to applause (if somebody in your head didn’t say liar to you and on Union Square

that time you leant from a soapbox over faces avid young opinionated old the middleaged numb with overwork eyes bleared with newspaperreading trying to tell them the straight dope make them laugh tell them what they want to hear wave a flag whispers the internal agitator crazy to succeed)

you suddenly falter ashamed flush red break out in sweat why not tell these men stamping in the wind that we stand on a quicksand? that doubt is the whetstone of understanding is too hard hurts instead of urging picket John D. Rockefeller the bastard if the cops knock your blocks off it’s all for the advancement of the human race while I go home after a drink and a hot meal and read (with some difficulty in the Loeb Library trot) the epigrams of Martial and ponder the course of history and what leverage might pry the owners loose from power and bring back (I too Walt Whitman) our storybook democracy

and all the time in my pocket that letter from that collegeboy asking me to explain why being right which he admits the radicals are in their private lives such shits

lie abed underdog (peeling the onion of doubt) with the book unread in your hand and swing on the seesaw maybe after all maybe topdog make

money you understood what he meant the old party with the white beard beside the crystal inkpot at the cleared varnished desk in the walnut office in whose voice boomed all the clergymen of childhood and shrilled the hosannahs of the offkey female choirs All you say is very true but there’s such a thing as sales and I have daughters I’m sure you too will end by thinking differently make

money in New York (lipstick kissed off the lips of a girl fashionablydressed fragrant at five o’clock in a taxicab careening down Park Avenue when at the end of each crosstown street the west is flaming with gold and white smoke billows from the smokestacks of steamboats leaving port and the sky is lined with greenbacks

the riveters are quiet the trucks of the producers are shoved off onto the marginal avenues

winnings sing from every streetcorner

crackle in the ignitions of the cars swish smooth in ballbearings sparkle in the lights going on in the showwindows croak in the klaxons tootle in the horns of imported millionaire shining towncars

dollars are silky in her hair soft in her dress sprout in the elaborately contrived rosepetals that you kiss become pungent and crunchy in the speakeasy dinner sting shrill in the drinks

make loud the girlandmusic show set off the laughing jag in the cabaret swing in the shufflingshuffling orchestra click sharp in the hatcheck girl’s goodnight)

if not why not? walking the streets rolling on your bed eyes sting from peeling the speculative onion of doubt if somebody in your head topdog? underdog? didn’t (and on Union Square) say liar to you