Immortal Beloved, by pd lyons – This is the poem of my youth
So this would have been written early 70’s and revised steadily through the ensuing years. This is the poem of my youth, at least my high school years 1970 – 74. Went to Crosby high school in Waterbury Ct. In those days it was located down town. Needless to say the small industrial city was an instrumental part of my education. Learned to shoot pool ( a little bit anyway) in Gentlocks – old slate tables scarred by decades of cigarettes, table legs as wide as me, and no girls allowed. Learned to panhandle from Charlie brown and Whitey ; enough for some cheap port a pack of smokes and maybe a little orange sunshine for myself – was a good afternoon. Dazz’z was the pinball arcade – just next door to the pool hall. Dom’nNicks the by the slice pizza joint – 35 cents one large slice and a sprite. the Palace Theater an old vaudeville house with acoustics to die for and crystal chandeliers and velvet seats – eight Miles High with the Byrds…. I learned about getting ripped off at the Kingsbury hotel – gave the guy a fiver for some acid and told wait out here, by the front door – not knowing there was another main door on the other block. Cheap enough the lesson – never got ripped off again in my life. Mattatuck music – the record store – still had listening booths, turntables and head phones. Tiger Ted, Louie, Bobby Comfort , all there still somewhere in my head. Dresher’s was the oldest restaurant in the state and i could get a dark german beer on tap in the bar, underage an all. Bird was this friend of mine named Dave. And too there was this older guy looked just like Beethoven. I bummed a lucky off him once. Used to see him once a day around 2:45 crossing the street to the green – always in a hurry always black raincoat and no hat. As for Beethoven’s lover – I don’t know lets just consider it a prayer from me, for him or maybe for myself after all?
Immortal Beloved
There is no such thing as Beethoven in Waterbury.
No one sees him buying race forms or cigarettes at Bauby’s corner.
He doesn’t play pin ball at Dazz’s,
chalk a cue at Gentlocks, pan handle a concert crowd at the Palace theatre, order Blue Ribbon shorts at Backstreet’s or sit in Dresher’s after three sipping cool tall dark drafts.
He’s not protesting the war at Library Park,
selling acid from the Kingsbury hotel,
falling asleep on Christmas eve with a girl named Mary in the chapel of St. Johns church.
Strung out girls don’t get to build snowmen on the green with him,
Mattatuck music can’t hire him to move their stock
and the old man at Palace Liquors can’t argue with him any-more.
Hare Krishna’s can’t get him to do their chanting.
Doorways where he stood out of the rain for hours are empty or are gone. Strangers at the all night bus station, killers on their way to Canada… women from Louisiana… never meet him any-more.
He doesn’t share a table with down-town Shirley and her father,
foretell the death of walking- stick Louie betrayed by Tiger Teddy,
sell more orange sunshine than Bobby Comfort,
blow a joint with the New Riders of the Purple Sage,
love a reincarnated baton twirling beauty queen from North Carolina,
let catholic school girls follow him home – cry when he had to let them go.
He doesn’t clamour along the roof tops with a friend named Bird, who never got to California, find free warmth in the library or in the stairwells of the Brown building or for a quarter a slice get to sit behind the pizza ovens at Dom’n Nicks.
And no one sees him sitting on the fire escape drinking Roma California Port with Whitey and Charlie Brown –
There’s no such thing as Beethoven in Waterbury any-more.
On the corner of Lewis and West Main, Beethoven’s lover stands
Eyeing several school girls waiting for their bus across the street.
She watches and waits – nothing happens for her in this town any-more.
Yet she dyes her hair red for him, still refuses to ever ride a bus
And her pale lips still struggle with those Lucky Strikes
Just like always in his dreams
(photographer unknown)
1974 crosby
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