POEM BY TONY SCIBELLA
Selected Work by Venice Poets
From Kid In America by Tony Scibella

(Black Ace Books 6, Passion Press-Temple of Man 2000)

(From Part I)

isometrics in the chair
already smoked 500 millimeters of cigarette
this morning
2 irish coffees a couple of reds snorted some
coke shot of tequila 3 dexi hearts smoked
some dope valiums 5 deximill spansules
brandy percodans handful whitecross bennies
shot some morph darvon for the head ache
vitimin e washed w/beer group of yellowstate
the desk blotter liquid methin the coffee
dunked hashbrownies ready to go to work now

(From Part II)

stuart came a long way from st louie thru
newyork as a teen trying to crack the theatergame
as an actor or director i forget. as stuart told it: it
was a girl in n y that told him he was gd when he
read some verse to her & being the romantic of
course it was a lady that gives u yr first as it was
for me the firstpiece i did a lady wanted & took
& thereafter introduced me as the artist & it was
embarrass i had to liveup to it. i am terrible as to
dates as when something exactly happened kindof
judging by howold my kids are relating
inaccurately to time so if i say i met stuart when
melody was 2 fine but i dont know howold
melody is now it must havebeen maybe 55 or 6
just before the suicide room came out by
jargonpress quite an honor for a youngman
starting & this pushed him toward commitment
&lipton (who was writing his book &
interviewing stuart) gave him a lot of
encouragement &being lipton was an 'old'
published pro-writer: important i know it
meansmuch to youth to hear an olderpro in yr
own profession say yesucan go for it.

(From Part IV)

historical note:
drugs: footnote 17: subsection: paranoiding: the
1950's: pre-beatnik: the laws are severe but there
is no intense policpressure to halt traffic becuz
there wuz none or no profit either dope was
associated w/musicians & people were paid - like
20$ a day to smoke weed in university labs while
they tested yr motorskills & hollywood smoked
the hip were high. u mostly cd be busted from
stupidity, carelessness or a hummer: a quirk
police had extraordinary powers & u cd be
search&seized on any pretense: 'yr honor, he
looked funny to me' - so the stash was all
important (whether yr car or yr person) to pass
the streetsearch but: if u had no outstanding
trafficwarrrants & yr papers were in order u might
slide- any time u were holding & were in the
street was an adventure in fear u cd be rousted.
u cd get for10$ a prince
albert pipetobacco can filled or absolutely
crammed full for15 u gotmaybe 40 or more,
depending on thecount, fat joints most of
theaction was either splitting up among a
fewfriends a 1/4 of a pound or buying one yrself
& selling off enough of it to make yr dough back
& have a taste & if u were cool & kept thetraffic
down u cd survive in most neighborhoods (not
like in lateryears i held the heroinbag & people
came by as often as they cd scrape together enuf
for a10$ paper maybe 5or6 times a day at all
hours we wd hide w/the lites out but they made
enuf commotion 'i know you're in there!' we wd
have to let them in to shut them up like a
schwartezenegger flick i saw where he is a robot
out after somepeople & they maim him & shoot
off his bodyparts til he is only an arm crawling
RELENTLESS like the americanjunky i knew
then)
the only dope in themdays was: pills : the
drines: benza&dexa. friendlydruggists gave up jars
of thousands of littelheart shaped dexies
friendlycroakers wrote thousands of friendly
scrips for this was post-war america in a flurry of
new drugs& psychiatry (depressed?:take these
fat?: take these
pain?: take these
cant sleep?: take these) in every
medicinecabinet in every home was a drugstore of
prescriptions (may I use your bathroom?) or cop a
roll of 10grainbennys in a gaybar & not to mean
there were no drugcops or vicesquad they were
there & vicious u needed a front something
somewhat respectable a job a purpose (deeks told
me he always carried a newspaper sometimes
folded to the want ads & walked like he had
someplace to go when he was on thestreet) at first,
even a beard was no handicap as
scientists&intellectuals had em before nutnicks
run naked hairy&wild down thebeach whooping.
&in the innocence of pre-narcoticdays stuart
believed for every man was a trigger which shot u
off in yr direction & pills&weed kicked us where
we went- pills get thebrain to racing ideas &
holyweed to let us loose to do it: its all good. :in
time: opium hashish & alcohol to spring u from
thejail u lived in there was a certain moody
pleasure to ally oneself to the outlaw
absinthedrinker & hashishdreamer & to accept yr
doom grinning in theteeth of it (later: the trigger
became so much harder to pull being drugged)