SOHO was originally written in collaboration with The Verse Verse and the estate of Allen Ginsberg ~ inspired by my trips to New York, the people I’ve met and adventures I’ve been on. Red bricks and terraces contrast a New York street from any other. The rain is always present, wether falling or in potential. But there is a soul to this city as if it were a poet to all the world. When Ana Maria Caballero, Sasha Stiles and Elisabeth Sweet contacted me to contribute a poem to After Ginsberg I was at the time roaming the streets of Soho writing poetry. I swiftly acquired a copy of “Gates Of Wrath" from a booksellers on the streets of Brooklyn. Ginsberg saw in his poetics, as in his collection “Gates Of Wrath” which takes its name from the poem by William Blake;
“To find the Western path,
Right thro' the Gates of Wrath,
I urge my way;”
Comparing those gates to the gates of Manhattan, walking through its sun drenched streets ~ in the Spring which May at any point turn to grey. At times Ginsberg spoke of a writhing hell in Manhattan as much as cascading angels. It was for him the devil’s parlour. I saw that parlour too and sat on its couch, its smoke filled rooms of a culture on the tides of change.
Ginsberg was at a vital part of that tide in his time. Where structures of tradition, perhaps the best of tradition was overhauled by the radicalisation of the changing times. Poetry was protest, love was protest, humanity was protest.
Soho came at a time when for me I felt lost wandering New York without direction ~ but for where the street guided me and the promise of digital art I thought if romance fell from the sky, it must land on the streets of Soho and those pavements where Ginsberg tread, outside the theatre down Broadway. Below were the pigeons perched on bronze sculptures that changed in the sunlight throughout the day.
I wondered into bars throughout Manhattan with my poetry book in hand and visits to the Chelsea Hotel ~ accompanied at times by the curator Haiver as we discussed the state of digital art, whiskeys in hand.
At the time I was releasing the Fable exhibition with SuperRare ~ I felt as if a transformation was occurring, and once it did the world world around had changed. I had changed, things would never be the same, and poetics of my life. I saw the city and its people in a chorus of poetry unlike any other. The buildings touched the skyline and Ginsberg’s ghost whispered to me of a letter I had not sent.
Below is that letter.
SOHO
Burlesque where I went that day,
Through the smoke and pink,
Red and black lingerie,
It’s left and ran away,
To the dance floor, to dance all day,
I write the ending on each page,
Write in hopeless decay,
She arrived and went away,
It’s unlike everything on display,
Staring at the flower of the faded stained and hopeless hour,
Redress the red dress,
Garters stretched across soft skin,
A potent pink flesh,
A single sweet intoxicating voice trembles in the seductive silence,
Like a hummingbird’s tweet in a volcanoes' chaos.
Bizarre disturbance like a flaming cross,
Into the wretched gardens where we lost,
Umbrella’s shade hides the despair,
Hides the raincoat of violence,
Secret rooms where they exist,
Find you in the parlour of the rubrics cube boudoir,
Pipes and libraries,
Serpents and time burning,
Spurned to the last this club’s hurting my eyes,
Dusted the cupboards well enough surely,
Desire, lined up by a house of lies.
It seems so sweet,
Though tinged with the devil’s hashish,
I will pull you under,
Where the merchants peddle their feet,
Above the devil’s conceit.
Stuck in the halls,
The blank pages,
Rusted frames on the walls,
My own note could be the mark of the sages,
Enough of the pigs trough through the pages,
I know what I’ve done
Capital down the sink,
Capital on the run,
Circles on the pages,
Ashes in my drink,
Cigarettes in the sink,
Painters friends and myrtle,
Worried so they think,
I climbed the walls of the museum,
And visit the visions,
Pure splash of paint,
Pure chains of fate,
Paint the relish of subconscious tastes,
Odalisque why was there dark patches,
Wondering alone with a notepad and pen,
Carrying these lonesome bags,
Where is happiness in the bricks and stains,
I’m never scared,
Never hoping,
Doesn’t care,
Silence is broken,
As I walk down Mayfair,
Paintings stacked from the floor,
Much of the time, I’m at their door knocking for hours,
Lost in limbo,
Cello struck a chord,
It’s bow damp in the twilight,
It’s player dripping from rain,
Suits soaked and puddles in the floor boards,
Have I become such an arbiter of degradation,
Sectioned off by the yellow lines at the train station,
Never met her shadows in the park,
Because it was too dark already,
Madeline maiden, of the darkest arts,
Stumbled at the start.
Burnt perfume thick with lavender oil,
The pastiche black, colors of a geisha’s umbrella,
I loved her, in my own sick way,
I wanted her, still perhaps to this day,
It’s easy to take shots at a man in love, for we love in secret
The mirrors always in front of our eyes,
Guilty by suspicion and always suspect in disguise,
But still I smile,
Maybe it’ll be good enough this time,
I feel like I’ve done my best,
I left my stool at the burlesque,
An aging ticket fell from my pocket,
We can put it all to rest,
Holy and entropic,
Close to my chest.
~ Laurence Fuller, 2024
