As we near the second anniversary of his passing, Rick’s family wanted to share some of his earlier work.
Below is a full-text transcript of the printed 1974 poetry collection Rick Young’s Red Tin Noodles.
Headings represent the page structure. You can also view PDF copy of the printed edition.
Cover Image
Cover illustration by Scituate artist and woodcarver Paul McCarthy (view the cover larger)
Title Page
Red Tin Noodles
Some poems by Richard Young/1974
Copyright pending 1977-78.
Poems
only everyone knows
the madman is miffed.
what with all the garbage talk on
broken circles, and the cylinder’s
strange affrontry, but no one is
to blame
save the lighter of the candles,
that rare combination of sunbeam
and cripple who will happily confess
to each new epidemic of genocide.
the madman whose ceiling shadows
call down to him in sing-sing shades,
in square roots of dimension and
ascension titillations until
light prevails
and he is downtown again, buying
sanity with rubber checks.
the madman.
The collision of thought trains
Sent out for judgment
in the careless thrashing
for love, by the duck feet
upside down in the pond
below the spastic bridge,
where the dots flow round,
unending and untouching,
and stranded halfway there
with a ripped ticket, with
the glass-eyed egg of doubt
beginning to run from
its cracks like a tear duct
glanced by holy fire,
four lines, which would be
square in certain senses,
boxed to depth by others,
implore the invasion
of space with the energy
of a painting in revolt
against its frame.
the jazz
under this noise
is a green woman’s veil/
dangling scorpion legs
hang from the throat
of a bass clarinet/
her wooden nails/
your drunken cymbals/
hiss the poison mirage
over smoking bedposts/
and the muscle strings/
like piano brains on fire/
explode into sand/
where the insect mate
is waiting for the desert
bride to unwrap herself/
from your music/
from the chamber of sighs
where you smoulder/
like a sultan in the heat
of a black vinyl sun/
puffing on a camel
Parking cars in a bottle
An amputee lobs
peas in the roulette wheel.
Young girls squirm,
growing t.v’s, hospital dresses,
skin without light.
We twist the dials of a stone
and the flowers migrate.
A small hand knocks
the ceiling through the floor.
Plumfree and his Gog
Plumfree uncracks his great cape with a bolt.
Knowing nothing about nothing, he is spared the misery
we feel when the dog farts on the sofa or
the cats run off with Grandpa’s favorite truss.
Look at us, he smiles, and we can’t help but think
back to what Gog said before he was choked to death
by an unfriendly seat belt: “The light bulbs are pawning
their filaments at darkshops on the water’s edge, to old men
drifting in a boat made out of sparks. And the sea is now
nothing but a wastebasket for our dreams.” Dear Gog,
but no one knew him save Plumfree, who tells his stories
around the sad fire, tales of men who wouldn’t believe
the woods, who scoffed at the baffling talk of the trees,
saying, “Where are their Xs’ and O’s?” while Gog was out
winding clocks inside the acorns. Plumfree says his body
is a mass of sacred animals, but never lets us see.
We say, “Just one tiny peek, old friend?” and drop our holy
nickles in his rice. And he says, “That’s not nice,”
and relates the parable of the smokestacks, reminding us
that “Gog died for our coins.” Then he paints a picture
of the divine smog flash that would start the heart.
Yes, Plumfree is an interesting guy to have around,
him and his Gog. Of course, we don’t believe him, but he
loves us anyway, knowing nothing about nothing as he does.
Two Gravesites
This is the asparagus cemetery,
where old vegetables cultivate their last rites
along the green-rowed carpet of their kitchen hours;
where young heads pop like leeks from the ground,
then dig back down in wisdom,
whispering, “the world is winter,”
as the elders eat themselves, stalk to stalk, into hunger.
The sign reads:
“There will be no baseball playing in the asparagus cemetery.”
And above this:
“There will be asparagus playing in the baseball cemetery.”
The baseball cemetery is a round plot of land
at the bottom of Suitcase Mountain
where every sphere that has ever passed through the time warp
of a window pane or outfield cloud finally comes to rest.
When the sun ever shines, the sweet trill of asparagus voices
can be heard as they run diamond circles
around the stagnant horsehide lumps, slowly retiring to earth.
And the sign reads:
“Coke is cheap. Please don’t eat the players.”
And above this:
“The happiest gravesite in the world.”
The weak of love
One by two and
Seven by sun,
The weak of love,
Like neglected tornadoes,
Poison bike tracks in
The pollen serenade,
And graze through
The hair trees, singing
Of chiclet farms,
Invented on a spot
In the deft pencil scratch.
Such thin appeasements
For the big eraser.
Ravishers of the sunrise
the day is so short
on your side of sight
where the body ends
with the body
o beautiful forsaken skies
nothing more for the eyes
of those who love one
not for the other
you seem so removed
from the general death
of the sad land
like a marble poster
raised above the eye’s vision
to blot the source you worship
so every morning the face
has your name on it
o sino paradisia
where the flowers fall
where the dead fall
where the most you can ask
is the least we can give
The red crusader
Outlandishly soft,
as no seminary for nature’s
burrs could ever be,
sent back to memory, only,
but enough.
Like silent bell claps
some can hear, he walks
away in rhyme.
His eyebrows form
a cloud line, better
mountains should the world
go flat again; and
his trace dissolves
to cross halves,
touching lightly on the
ground to wait for sentence,
feather penance for the poor
who touched his hand
before the death.
Walk away, red morning!
In the waning starboard sky,
he is the brightest of thieves.
Heart mountains and stone fires
The love face has weathered to shards,
an outlaw poster sifted through ghost towns,
a threadbare noose of polaroid now
wired to the echo of some south-running train
and fallen down across a dirty plate,
where even vermin cannot glut for fear
(where red mouths slash the lion’s sleep
with gleaming tongue pestles of ice).
The fire burns black by the road edge
like a monument to simple dying stars,
a gift for those meant to miss their way,
lost among the map veins of the love face
and climbing up forever over empty hills
where buzzards fight with jackals for their food
(where the blood born in the eyes of wild babies
is slapped to death by endless cries of night).
Cave dweller
If I had a red pen
I would write
this on the roof of my mouth,
inviting all the love cave dwellers
to come borrowing through.
Back out through the teeth
of nothing,
they would have to invent.
How did you like the cloud straddling
the wall of empty pockets, they could say.
Or they could say nothing,
and be right,
and be right,
just hum some joke about the Tartar invasion,
choking their throats with my own signs, say.
Besides, there’s no way I can get
into my own mouth, whole,
pour my heart out on the ceiling
like the chapel of beets,
when I can’t even get into my heart,
much less my mind, or even my cave
now that I can’t go into the darkness
without drowning
in the bloody ink of my own points,
this roof dripping everywhere.
