Autobiography
An autobiography of a lizard should contain
lizard reflections: reminiscences, confessions
daydreams. One morning the lizard said,
“All right, Uncle Baxter, I’ll get my stuff.”
The next moment, perched on Uncle Baxter’s
shoulder, the lizard watched as Uncle Baxter
handled a crane; a big ball on a chain
crumbled a stone wall. Then there was the time
the lizard and Uncle Baxter relaxed at St. Kitts
in palm shade, a view of turquoise water,
Uncle Baxter in a lounge, tall green drink
in hand, lost in War and Peace; the lizard
slithered along motes of a sandcastle kids
had built then abandoned. An autobiography
of a lizard should contain the lizard’s preferred
bowling team, it’s preferred soup and rainforest.
Uncle Baxter had a German Shepherd, Lucky,
the lizard didn’t like; when the lizard, crossing
a room, made eye contact with the dog
it looked like it wanted to kill him. The lizard
lived across the street from Uncle Baxter.
When Lucky got old, Uncle Baxter helped
the dog up the stairs. That ended. Uncle
was sad but the lizard couldn’t share in that.
Uncle was alone in that dark hour, smoking
a cigarette, looking out a window. One day
Uncle Baxter took the lizard into the city of neon
lights, names on marquees, honking taxi cabs.
Messengers in long coats scuttled across
an avenue. The lizard wondered what they
were delivering, what was in the messages.
Another day Uncle Baxter took the lizard
to a place of rocks and shadows, and
shouted something only the lizard could hear.
There was no one around, no one for miles.
Heartless
I stand above the river and look down.
“Have you no heart?” Of course
it doesn’t. It’s not a nightingale.
“Ain’t you got no heart?” Frank Nitti,
flat on his back, said to Eliot Ness,
as Ness towered over him,
pistol in hand, in an Untouchables
on my Motorola’s screen. Back to the river.
I know it as well as any body of water
expert, though I’ve never been in it or on it.
Another river, in, yes, but not this river.
Were I the poet William Stafford,
I could say firmly “Ask the river.”
It sloshes. It has neither heart nor soul.
I live near it. Some neighbor
might claim it has a soul. Get real!
This river, shaped something like an S,
a bit hourglass, bends, curves,
in line with the bank I’m on
and the bank on the other side.
Willows, sycamores, bushes, and grass
grow there, as they grow here.
My “no heart talk” is talk to myself
and to anyone who wants to listen
or happens to hear. This bank’s mud,
blackish blue, gleams.
The river’s color, that of pea soup,
bears a five o’clock shadow. One willow
on the opposite bank is lovely.
If it could talk, it would have the pitch
and timbre of the silver-tongued Johnny
Dollar, Bob Bailey of radio fame.
Sweet Seasons
Lizard asked Uncle Baxter about Marilyn
Kilroy.
She was born in Savannah, Georgia
in 1927 and died in New York City in 1969.
Who was she?
A torch singer, but one song of hers,
Laffin at Me, sounds like typical pop schlock
you’d hear from the late fifties.
How did she make her mark?
In ‘51 she appeared in The Big Night,
the one unflawed character in this film
about the corruption of life in America
as it was as opposed to how it is.
She was the one George, the protagonist
looked at and said to, you’re so beautiful
even though..his inference
was even though you are black. You saw
the change in her face, at first
pleased, suddenly revolted.
What did she look like?
She had brown eyes. The features in her
face perfectly proportioned,
she was lovely, but not uncommonly so.
What else about her do you know?
She sang in New York clubs. In November
1969 she and her twenty year old
stepdaughter were murdered in their
apartment because her husband Pat
Jackson, a car salesperson, had failed
to pay a debt he owed to drug dealers.
Did she herself do drugs?
I have no idea. She may have. I only know
she sang, and acted in a few films.
She sang in The Big Night moments before
George sidled up to her.
She was the impetus for racism as an
integral part of the corruption depicted
in this film, which, unlike Laffin at Me,
was not dollar-driven but had something
to say, and to show, the face of Terry
Angelus, played by Marilyn, aka Mauri
Leighton, who in real life was murdered,
either shot, stabbed, or beaten,
I don’t know how, there’s much I don’t know.
I saw her face change as she stood
outside the club in that movie, about
to go someplace else, shortly after midnight,
I don’t know where. You see
George leave in a cab with his pal
the professor, you don’t see Terry again.
You know she’s in The Big Night
not only for her singing.
Were drugs rampant in New York in ‘69?
I suspect so. Marilyn’s stage name
was Mauri Leighton. She was beautiful.
© Frank Murphy: Colin’s World 2:33p.m.