John Thomas & Philomene Long Thomas
DON'T TOUCH ME SEXUALLY WHILE I'M READING
EMILY DICKINSON

(Excerpts)

Philomene: John, when we were making love, you looked like Allen Ginsberg.

John: I’ll tell you a secret. I always wanted to look like Allen Ginsberg. Did I have that ratty tweed jacket on?

Philomene: John, really, you looked beautiful.

John: You sort of looked like Gregory Corso, whereas most of the time you look like William Burroughs...

Philomene: What did you perceive in me that made you fall in love with me?

John: That you were mentally ill. That you could bully and make people serve you. A blantant bare faced liar. A thief. And also heavy into assigning blame.

Philomene: Well, one thing I would steal was toilet paper. I felt the world was shit and owed me toilet paper. Stuart (Perkoff) used to create a commotion of silence every time I entered a bathroom--just to draw attention to that grievous act. I would carry around huge bags full of toilet paper.

John: You’re a nut.

Philomene: I am not.

John: You’re telling me you carried around huge bags of toilet paper and are not a nut!

Philomene: I have the Blessed Virgin Mary coming out of my eyes.

John: That must hurt. Both for you and for her...... You, Philomene, are a Catholic hysteric. You’re going to wear so many crucifixes you’ll go into cervical overload and have to get one of those contraptions (like Maezumi, Roshi’s) to hang upside down -- occupational hazards of religious nuts.

Philomene: Oh Yeah!

John: Oh Yeah! That was a good one. You’re the champ at this kind of thing, the champ of reparte. Oh yeah. No topping that.

Philomene: Oh Yeah! Well Keroauc was a strange solitary crazy Catholic mystic and brought beatific to the label "BEAT". He was waiting for God’s Face. John! Think bigger than tiny little nipples getting hard. John, why do you always want to put your hand there? It’s not the center of the Universe.

John: Suppose it is.

Philomene: Don’t touch me sexually while I’m reading Emily Dickinson.

***

Philomene: You know you have a sexy hobble.

John: After a lot of practice. I wasn’t born with it.

Philomene: Now, Emily Dickinson, she had nobility. She was American aristocracy.

John: Moron Midwest moneyed class.

Philomene: It is difficult for me, an Irish Poet Queen, living midst the dregs of society. I do have a difficult time of it amidst the lack of gentility.

John: You put it in your book how difficult it is living with me among this lack of gentility. Get away!

Philomene: Religion and poetry brought me here.

John: I made my decisions at the beginning of the world to become a poet and to cleave to you, Philomene, my only one.

Philomene: John, are we being punished for something we did?

John: We could have been punished by a demon for doing something good.

Philomene: In 1958 I entered the convent for a life of puberty and nubility, I mean poverty and nobility.

John: Johnny Johnston said the first words that brought me to the Beat Generation in 1959 He leaned over, opened the door to his convertible and said, “Get in.”

Philomene: Nun on Fire/Beatnik on Ice. That’s my conflict. All over these walls pictures of nuns, dead nuns, nuns about to get the stigmata. I’ve got the stigmata all over me.

John : I don’t doubt it.

Philomene: Yes. Nun on Fire. Beatnick on Ice. This is my conflict.

John: Any Catholic is too Catholic. Any Buddhist is not enough Buddhist.

Philomene: I’m going off to the desert to become a saint.

John: You can’t even do it in the desert. You’re just going to fuck the desert up.

Philomene: Today I received my job application for the position of Cemetary supervisor.

John: You sure can rise to the non occassion

Philomene: John, do you have any comment about our proximity to apparently dropping dead?

John: We have no money for elaborate medical care. And I don’t know there is such a thing as death.

Beat No Chaser
Broctman's Memorial Hospital - Stuart Z. Perkoff's Last Words
Bukowski In The Bathtub - John Thomas & Philomene Long Thomas remember Charles Bukowski
Dialogues - John Thomas & Philomene Long Thomas, "Trying To Get Throgh The Resurrection"
The Ellison - Philomene Long Thomas & John Thomas
Philomene Long Thomas Interviewed by Nin Moore for The Autry Museum
Poem Beat - More poetry by Philomene Long Thomas
The Venice Beats
The Venice Beats enshrined in cement on The Venice Boardwalk
Your Mind At The Moment of Death - Conversation with Allen Ginsberg & Philomene Long Thomas
Zen Poems I
Zen Poems II

Titles by Philomene & John available from Lummox Press, P.O. Box 5301, San Pedro, CA 90733

Philomene Long Thomas                                        John Thomas
QUEEN OF BOHEMIA (two-volume set)            FEEDING THE ANIMAL 
Volume One: Queen of Bohemia                            $6.00
Volume Two: Queen of Bohemia
(Cold Eye Burning at 3:AM)
$6.00 each or $9.00 for two-book set