Marriage   : Gregory Corso 
  
Should I get married? Should I be Good?  
Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustaus hood?  
Don't take her to movies but to cemeteries  
tell all about werewolf bathtubs and forked clarinets  
then desire her and kiss her and all the preliminaries  
and she going just so far and I understanding why  
not getting angry saying You must feel! It's beautiful to feel!  
Instead take her in my arms lean against an old crooked tombstone  
and woo her the entire night the constellations in the sky-- 
  
When she introduces me to her parents  
back straightened, hair finally combed, strangled by a tie,  
should I sit knees together on their 3rd degree sofa  
and not ask Where's the bathroom?  
How else to feel other than I am,  
often thinking Flash Gordon soap--  
O how terrible it must be for a young man  
seated before a family and the family thinking  
We never saw him before! He wants our Mary Lou!  
After tea and homemade cookies they ask What do you do for a living?  
Should I tell them? Would they like me then?  
Say All right get married, we're losing a daughter  
but we're gaining a son--  
And should I then ask Where's the bathroom? 
  
O God, and the wedding! All her family and her friends  
and only a handful of mine all scroungy and bearded  
just waiting to get at the drinks and food--  
And the priest! He looking at me if I masturbated  
asking me Do you take this woman for your lawful wedded wife?  
And I trembling what to say say Pie Glue!  
I kiss the bride all those corny men slapping me on the back  
She's all yours, boy! Ha-ha-ha!  
And in their eyes you could see some obscene honeymoon going on-- 
  
then all that absurd rice and clanky cans and shoes  
Niagara Falls! Hordes of us! Husbands! Wives! Flowers! Chocolates!  
All streaming into cozy hotels  
All going to do the same thing tonight  
The indifferent clerk he knowing what was going to happen  
The lobby zombies they knowing what  
The whistling elevator man he knowing  
The winking bellboy knowing  
Everybody knowing! I'd be almost inclined not to do anything!  
Stay up all night! Stare that hotel clerk in the eye!  
Screaming: I deny honeymoon! I deny honeymoon!  
running rampant into those almost climatic suites  
yelling Radio belly! Cat shovel!  
O I'd live in Niagara forever! in a dark cave beneath the Falls  
I'd sit there the Mad Honeymooner devising ways to break marriages, a scourge of bigamy a saint of divorce-- 
  
But I should get married I should be good  
How nice it'd be to come home to her  
and sit by the fireplace and she in the kitchen  
aproned young and lovely wanting by baby  
and so happy about me she burns the roast beef  
and comes crying to me and I get up from my big papa chair  
saying Christmas teeth! Radiant brains! Apple deaf!  
God what a husband I'd make! Yes, I should get married!  
So much to do! like sneaking into Mr Jones' house late at night  
and cover his golf clubs with 1920 Norwegian books  
Like hanging a picture of Rimbaud on the lawnmower  
like pasting Tannu Tuva postage stamps all over the picket fence  
like when Mrs Kindhead comes to collect for the Community Chest  
grab her and tell her There are unfavorable omens in the sky!  
And when the mayor comes to get my vote tell him  
When are you going to stop people killing whales!  
And when the milkman comes leave him a note in the bottle  
Penguin dust, bring me penguin dust, I want penguin dust-- 
  
Yet if I should get married and it's Connecticut and snow  
and she gives birth to a child and I am sleepless, worn,  
up for nights, head bowed against a quiet window, the past behind me,  
finding myself in the most common of situations a trembling man  
knowledged with responsibility not twig-smear not Roman coin soup--  
O what would that be like!  
Surely I'd give it for a nipple a rubber Tacitus  
For a rattle bag of broken Bach records  
Tack Della Francesca all over its crib  
Sew the Greek alphabet on its bib  
And build for its playpen a roofless Parthenon 
  
No, I doubt I'd be that kind of father  
not rural not snow no quiet window  
but hot smelly New York City  
seven flights up, roaches and rats in the walls  
a fat Reichian wife screeching over potatoes Get a job!  
And five nose running brats in love with Batman  
And the neighbors all toothless and dry haired  
like those hag masses of the 18th century  
all wanting to come in and watch TV  
The landlord wants his rent  
Grocery store Blue Cross Gas & Electric Knights of Columbus  
Impossible to lie back and dream Telephone snow, ghost parking--  
No! I should not get married and I should never get married!  
But--imagine if I were to marry a beautiful sophisticated woman  
tall and pale wearing an elegant black dress and long black gloves  
holding a cigarette holder in one hand and highball in the other  
and we lived high up a penthouse with a huge window  
from which we could see all of New York and even farther on clearer days  
No I can't imagine myself married to that pleasant prison dream-- 
  
O but what about love? I forget love  
not that I am incapable of love  
it's just that I see love as odd as wearing shoes--  
I never wanted to marry a girl who was like my mother  
And Ingrid Bergman was always impossible  
And there maybe a girl now but she's already married  
And I don't like men and--  
but there's got to be somebody!  
Because what if I'm 60 years old and not married,  
all alone in furnished room with pee stains on my underwear  
and everybody else is married! All in the universe married but me! 
  
Ah, yet well I know that were a woman possible as I am possible  
then marriage would be possible--  
Like SHE in her lonely alien gaud waiting her Egyptian lover  
so I wait--bereft of 2,000 years and the bath of life.