Contents
Woman's lies
tabby cat
he has on blue jeans and tennis shoes
and walks with two young girls
about his age.
every now and then he leaps
into the air and
clicks his heels together.he's like a young colt
but somehow he also reminds me
more of a tabby cat.
his ass is soft and
he has no more on his mind
than a gnat.
he jumps along behind his girls
clicking his heels together.
then he pulls the hair of one
runs over to the other and
squeezes her neck.
he has fucked both of them and
is pleased with himself.
it has all happened so easily for him.
and I think, ah,
my little tabby cat
what nights and days
wait for you.
your soft ass
will be your doom.
your agony
will be endless
and the girls
who are yours now
will soon belong to other men
who didn't get their cookies
and cream so easily and
so early.
the girls are practicing on you
the girls are practicing for other men
for someone out of the jungle
for someone out of the lion cage.
I smile as
I watch you walking along
clicking your heels together.
my god, boy, I fear for you
on that night
when you first find out.
it's a sunny day now.
jump
while you
can.
sex
I am driving down Wilton Avenue
when this girl of about 15
dressed in tight blue jeans
that grip her behind like two hands
steps out in front of my car
I stop to let her cross the street
and as I watch her contours waving
she looks directly through my windshield
at me
with purple eyes
and then blows
out of her mouth
the largest pink globe of
bubble gum
I have ever seen
while I am listening to Beethoven
on the car radio
she enters a small grocery store
and is gone
and I am left with
Ludwig.
a killer
consistency is terrific:
shark-mouth
grubby interior with an
almost perfect body,
long blazing hair—it confuses me
and othersshe runs from man to man
offering endearments
she speaks of love
then breaks each man
to her will
shark-mouthed
grubby interior
we see it too late:
after the cock gets swallowed
the heart follows
her long blazing hair
her almost perfect body
walks down the street
as the same sun
falls upon flowers.
girl in a miniskirt reading the Bible outside my window
Sunday. I am eating a
grapefruit. church is over at the Russian
Orthodox to the
west.
she is dark
of Eastern descent,
large brown eyes look up from the Bible
then down. a small red and black
Bible, and as she reads
her legs keep moving, moving,
she is doing a slow rhythmic dance
reading the Bible...
long gold earrings;
2 gold bracelets on each arm,
and it's a mini-suit, I suppose,
the cloth hugs her body,
the lightest of tans is that cloth,
she twists this way and that,
long young legs warm in the sun...
there is no escaping her being
there is no desire to...
my radio is playing symphonic music
that she cannot hear
but her movements coincide exactly
to the rhythms of the
symphony...
she is dark, she is dark
she is reading about God.
I am God.
the price
drinking 15-dollar champagne —
Cordon Rouge— with the hookers.one is named Georgia and she
doesn't like pantyhose:
I keep helping her pull up
her long dark stockings.
the other is Pam— prettier
but not much soul, and
we smoke and talk and I
play with their legs and
stick my bare foot into
Georgia's open purse.
it's filled with
bottles of pills. I
take some of the pills.
"listen," I say, "one of
you has soul, the other
looks, can't I combine
the 2 of you? take the soul
and stick it into the looks?"
"you want me," says Pam, "it
will cost you a hundred."
we drink some more and Georgia
falls to the floor and can't
get up.
I tell Pam that I like her
earrings very much. her
hair is long and a natural
red.
"I was only kidding about the hundred," she says.
"oh," I say, "what will it cost
me?"
she lights her cigarette with
my lighter and looks at me
through the flame:
her eyes tell me.
"look," I say, "I don't think I
can ever pay that price again."
she crosses her legs
inhales on her cigarette.
as she exhales she smiles
and says, "sure you can."
close encounters of another kind
are we going to the movies or not?
she asked him.all right, he said, let's go.
I'm not going to put any panties on
so you can finger-fuck me in the
dark, she said.
should we get buttered popcorn?
he asked.
sure, she said.
leave your panties on,
he said.
what is it? she asked.
I just want to watch the movie,
he answered.
look, she said, I could go out on
the street, there are a hundred men
out there who'd be delighted to have
me.
all right, he said, go ahead out here.
I'll stay home and read the National
Enquirer.
you son of a bitch, she said, I am
trying to build a meaningful
relationshp.
you can't build it with a hammer,
he said.
are we going to the movies or not?
she asked.
all right, he said, let's
go...
at the corner of Western and
Franklin he put on the blinker
to make his left turn
and a man in the on-coming lane
speeded up
as if to cut him off.
brakes grabbed. there wasn't a
crash but there almost was one.
he cursed at the man in the other
car. the man cursed back. the
man had another person in the car with
him. it was his wife.
they were going to the movies
too.
song
Julio came by with his guitar and sang his
latest song.
Julio was famous, he wrote songs and also
published books of little drawings and
poems.
they were very
good.Julio sang a song about his latest love
affair.
he sang that
it began so well
then it went to
hell.
those were not the words exactly
but that was the meaning of the
words.
Julio finished
singing.
then he said, "I still care for
her, I can't get her off my
mind."
"what will I do?" Julio
asked.
"drink,"Henry said,
pouring.
Julio just looked at his
glass:
"I wonder what she's doing
now?"
"probably engaging in oral
copulation,"Henry
suggested.
Julio put his guitar back in
the case and
walked to the
door.
Henry walked Julio to his car which
was parked in the
drive.
it was a nice moonlit
night.
as Julio started his car and
backed out the drive
Henry waved him a
farewell.
then he went inside
sat
down.
he finished Julio's untouched
drink
then he
phoned
her.
"he was just by," Henry told
her, "he's feeling very
bad..."
"you'll have to excuse me,"
she said, "but I'm busy right
now."
she hung
up.
and Henry poured one of his
own
as outside the crickets sang
their own
song.
man mowing the lawn across the way from me
I watch you walking with your machine.
ah, you're too stupid to be cut like grass,
you're too stupid to let anything violate you— the girls won't use their knives on you
they don't want to
their sharp edge is wasted on you,
you are interested only in baseball games and
western movies and grass blades.can't you take just one of my knives?
here's an old one — stuck into me in 1955,
she's dead now, it wouldn't hurt much.
I can't give you this last one—I can't pull it out yet,
but here's one from 1964, how about taking
this 1964 one from me?
man mowing the lawn across the way from me
don't you have a knife somewhere in your gut
where love left?
man mowing the lawn across the way from me
don't you have a knife somewhere deep in your heart
where love left?
man mowing the lawn across the way from me
don't you see the young girls walkign down the sidewalks now
with knives in their purses?
don't you see their beautiful eyes and dresses and
hair?
don't you see their beautiful asses and knees and
ankles?
man mowing the lawn across the way from me
is that all you see— those grass blades?
is that all you hear—the drone of the mower?
I can see all the way to Italy
to Japan
to the Honduras
I can see the young girls sharpening their knives
in the morning and at noon and at night, and
especially at night, o,
especially at night.
empire of coins
the legs are gone and the hopes — the lava of outpouring,
and I haven't shaved in sixteen days
but the mailman still makes his rounds and
water still comes out of the faucet and I have a photo of
myself with glazed and milky eyes full of simple music
in golden trunks and 8 oz. gloves when I made the semi-finals
only to be taken out by a German brute who should have been
locked in a cage for the insane and allowed to drink blood.
Now I am insane and stare at the wallpaper as one would stare
at a Dalí (he has lost it) or an early Picasso, and I send
the girls out for a beer, the old girls who barely bother to wipe
their asses and say,"well, I guess I won't comb my hair today: it might bring me luck." well, anyway, they wash the dishes and
chop the wood, and the landlady keeps insisting "let me in,
I can't
get in, you've got the lock on, and what's all that singing and
cussing in there?" but she only wants a piece of ass while
she pretends
she wants the rent
but she's not going to get either one of 'em.
meanwhile the skulls of the dead are full of beetles and
Shakes-
peare and old football scores like S.C. 16, N.D. 14 on a John
Baker field goal.
I can see the fleet from my window, the sails and the guns, always
the guns poking their eyes in the sky looking for trouble like young
L.A. cops too young to shave, and the younger sailors out
there sex-hungry, trying to act tough, trying to act like men
but really closer to their mother's nipples than to a true evalu-
ation of existence. I say god damn it, that
my legs are gone and the outpourings too. inside my brain
they cut and snip and
pour oil
to burn and fire out early dreams.
"darling," says one of the girls, "you've got to snap out of it,
we're running out of MONEY. how do you want
your toast?
light or dark?"
a woman's a woman, I say, and I put my binoculars between her
kneecaps and I can see where
empires have fallen.
I wish I had a brush, some paint, some paint and a brush, I say.
"why?" asks one of the
whores.
BECAUSE RATS DON'T LIKE OIL! I scream.
(I can't go on. I don't belong here.) I listen to radio programs and
people's voices talking and I marvel that they can get excited
and interested over nothing and I flick out the lights, I
crash out the lights, and I pull the shades down, I
tear the shades down and I light my last cigar imagining
the dreamjump off the Empire State Building
into the thickheaded bullbrained mob with the hard-on attitude.
already forgotten are the dead of Normandy, Lincoln's
stringy beard,
all the bulls that have died to flashing red capes,
all the love that has died in real women and real men
while fools have been elevated to the trumpet's succulent sneer
and I have fought red-handed and drunk
in slop-pitted alleys
the bartenders of this rotten land.
and I laugh, I can still laugh, who can't laugh when the
whole thing
is so ridiculous
that only the insane, the clowns, the half-wits,
the cheaters, the whores, the horseplayers, the bankrobbers, the
poets...are interesting?
in the dark I hear the hands reaching for the last of my money
like mice nibbling at paper, automatic feeders on inbred
helplessness, a false drunken God asleep at the wheel...
a quarter rolls across the floor, and I remember all the faces
and
the football heroes, and everything has meaning, and an editor
writes me, you are good
but
you are too emotional
the way to whip life is to quietly frame the agony,
study it and put it to sleep in the abstract.
is there anything less abstract
than dying day by day?
The door closes and the last of the great whores have gone
and somehow no matter how they have
killed me, they are all great, and I smoke quietly
thinking of Mexico, the tired horses, of Havana and Spain
and Normandy, of the jabbering insane, of my dear
friends, of no more friends
ever; and the voice of my Mexican buddy saying, "you
won't die
you won't die in the war, you're too smart, you'll take care
of yourself."
I keep thinking of the bulls. the brave bulls dying every day.
the whores are gone. the bombing has stopped for a minute.
fuck everybody.
the young lady who lives in Canoga Park
she only fucks the ones she doesn't want
to marry.
to the others she says
you've got to marry me.
or maybe she just fucks the ones she wants
to fuck?
she talks about it freely
and lives in the apartment at the end
with a 9-year-old red-haired boy
and a 7-month-old baby.
she gets child support
and when she works
she works in the factories or as a
cocktail waitress.
she has a boyfriend 60 years old
who drinks a jug of wine a day
has a bad leg
and lives at the YMCA.
she smokes dope, mostly grass,
takes pills
wears large dark glasses
and talks talks talks
while not looking at you adn
twisting a long beaded necklace with her thin
nervous fingers.
she has a neck like a swan,
could be a movie star,
twice in the madhouse,
and a sister in prison.
you never know when she is going to
go mad again and
throw tiny fits
and 3 a.m. phone calls at you.the kids trundle about the apartment
and she fucks and doesn't fuck,
has an exercise chart on her wall
bends this way and that
touches her toes
leaps
stretches and so
forth. she goes from dope to religion
and from religion back to dope and
from black guys to white guys and from white to
black again.
when she takes off those dark glasses
her eyes are blue
and she tries to smile
as she twists that necklace
around and around.
there are 3 keys on the end of it:
her car key
her apartment key
and one that I've never
asked her about.
she's not given up,
she's not dead yet,
she's hardly even old,
her air conditioner doesn't
work and that's really all I know
about her because I'm one of those
she wants to
marry.
I'm in love
she's young, she said,
but look at me,
I have pretty ankles,
and look at my wrists, I have pretty
wrists
o my god,
I thought it was all working,
and now it's her again,
every time she phones you go crazy,
you told me it was over
you told me it was finished,
listen, I've lived long enough to become a
good woman,
why do you need a bad woman?
you need to be tortured, don't you?
you think life is rotten if somebody treats you
rotten it all fits,
doesn't it?
tell me, is that it? do you want to be treated like a
piece of shit?
and my son, my son was going to meet you.
I told my son
and I dropped all my lovers.
I stood up in a cafe and screamed
I'M IN LOVE,
and now you've made a fool of me...I'm sorry, I said, I'm really sorry.
hold me, she said, will you please hold me?
I've never been in one of these things before, I said, these triangles...
she got up and lit a cigarette, she was trembling all
over. she paced up and down, wild and crazy. she had
a small body. her arms were thin, very thin and when
she screamed and started beating me I held her
wrists and then I got it through the eyes: hatred,
centuries deep and true. I was wrong and graceless and
sick. all the things I had learned had been wasted.
there was no living creature as foul as I
and all my poems were
false.
the colored birds
it is a highrise apt. next door
as he beats her at night and she screams and nobody stops it
and I see her the next day
standing in the driveway with curlers in her hair
and she has huge buttocks jammed into black
slacks and she says, standing in the sun
"god damn it, 24 hours in this place, I never go anywhere!"then he comes out, proud, the little matador,
a pail of shit, his belly hanging over his bathing trunks—
he might have been a handsome man once, might have,
now they both stand there and he says,
"I think I'm goin' for a swim."
she doesn't answer and he goes to the pool and
jumps into the fishless, sandless water, the peroxide-codeine water,
and I stand by the kitchen window drinking coffee
trying to unboil the fuzzy, stinking picture &mdsah;
after all, you can't live elbow to elbow to people without wanting to
draw a number on them.
every time my toilet flushes they can hear it. every time they
go to bed I can hear them.
soon she goes inside and then comes out with 2 colored birds
in a cage. I don't know what they are. they don't talk. they
just move a little, seeming to twitch their tail-feathers and
shit. that's all they do.
she stands there looking at them.
he comes out: the little tuna, the little matador, out of the pool,
a dripping unbeautiful white, the cloth of his wet suit gripping.
"get those birds in the house!"
"but the birds need sun!"
"I sid, get those birds in the house!"
"the birds are gonna die!"
"you listen to me, I said, GET THOSE BIRDS IN THE HOUSE!"
she bends and lifts them, her huge buttocks in the black slacks
looking so sad.
he slams the door behind them. then I hear it.
BAM!
she screams
BAM! BAM!
she screams
then: BAM!
and she screams.
I pour another coffee and decide that that's a new
one: he usually only beats her at
night. it takes a man to beat his wife night and
day. although he doesn't look like much
he's one of the few real men around
here.
who in the hell is Tom Jones?
I was shacked with a
24-year-old girl from
New York City for
two weeks—about
the time of the garbage
strike out there, and
one night my 34-year-
old woman arrived and
she said, "I want to see
my rival." she did
and then she said, "o,
you're a cute little thing!"
next I knew there was a
screech of wildcats—
such screaming and scratch-
ing, wounded animal moans,
blood and piss...I was drunk and in my
shorts. I tried to
separate them and fell,
wrenched my knee. then
they were through the screen
door and down the walk
and out in the street.
squad cars full of cops
arrived. a police heli-
copter circled overhead.
I stood in the bathroom
and grinned in the mirror.
it's not often at the age
of 55 that such splendid
things occur.
better than the Watts
riots.
the 34-year-old
came back in. she had
pissed all over her-
self and her clothing
was torn and she was
followed by 2 cops who
wanted to know why.
pulling up my shorts
I tried to explain.
the ladies of summer
the ladies of summer will die like the rose
and the liethe ladies of summer will love
so long as the price is not
forever
the ladies of summer
might love anybody;
they might even love you
as long as a summer
lasts.
yet winter will come to them
too
white snow and
a cold freezing
and faces so ugly
that even death
will turn away —
wince —
before taking
them.
a free 25-page booklet
dying for a beer dying
for and of life
on a windy afternoon in Hollywood
listening to symphony music from my little red radio
on the floor.a friend said,
"all ya gotta do is go out on the sidewalk
and lay down
somebody will pick you up
somebody will take care of you."
I look out the window at the sidewalk
I see something walking on the sidewalk
she wouldn't lay down there,
only in special places for special people with special $$$$
and
special ways
while I am dying for a beer on a windy afternoon in
Hollywood,
nothing like a beautiful broad dragging it past you on the
sidewalk
moving it past your famished window
she's dressed in the finest cloth
she doesn't care what you say
as long as you do not get in her
way, and it must be that she doesn't shit or
have blood
she must be a cloud, friend, the way she floats past us.
I am too sick to lay down
the sidewalks frighten me
the whole damned city frightens me,
what I will become
what I have become
frightens me.
ah, the bravado is gone
the big run through center is gone
on a windy afternoon in Hollywood
my radio cracks and spits its dirty music
through a floor full of empty beerbottles.
now I hear a siren
it comes closer
the music stops
the man on the radio says,
"we will send you a free 25-page booklet:
FACE THE FACTS ABOUT COLLEGE COSTS."
the siren fades into the cardboard mountains
and I look out the window again as the clasped fist of
boiling cloud comes down — the wind shakes the plants outside
I wait for evening I wait for night I wait sitting on a chair
by the window—
the cook drops in the live
red-pink salty
rough-tit crab and
the game works
on
come get me.
the girl outside the supermarket
a very tall girl lifts her nose at me
outside a supermarket
as if I were a walking garbage
can; and I had no desire for her,
no more desire
than for a
phone pole.
what was her message?
that I would never see the top of her
pantyhose?I am a man in his 50s
sex is no longer an aching mystery
to me, so I can't understand
being snubbed by a
phone pole.
I'll leave young girls to young
men.
it's a lonely world
of frightened people,
just as it has always
been.
metamorphosis
a girlfriend came in
built me a bed
scrubbed and waxed the kitchen floor
scrubbed the walls
vacuumed
cleaned the toilet
the bathtub
scrubbed the bathroom floor
and cut my toenails and
my hair.then
all on the same day
the plumber came and fixed the kitchen faucet
and the toilet
and the gas man fixed the heater
and the phone man fixed the phone.
now I sit here in all this perfection.
it is quiet.
I have broken off with all 3 of my girlfriends.
I felt better when everything was in disorder.
it will take me some months to get back to normal:
I can't even find a roach to commune with.
I have lost my rhythm.
I can't sleep.
I can't eat.
I have been robbed of my filth.
butterflies
I believe in earning one's own way
but I also believe in the unexpected
gift
and it is a wondrous thing
when a woman who has read your works
(or parts of them, anyhow)
offers her self to you
out of the blue
a total
stranger.such an offer
such a communion
must be taken as
holy.
the hands
the fingers
the hair
the smell
the light.
one would like to be strong enough
to turn them away
those butterflies.
I believe in earning one's own way
but I also believe in the unexpected gift.
I have no shame.
we deserve one another
those butterflies
who flutter to my tiny
flame
and
me.
bow wow love
here things are tough but
they're mostly always tough.
basically I'm just trying to get along
with the female, when you
first meet them their eyes
are all moist with under-
standing; laughter abounds
like sand fleas. then, Je-
sus, time tinkles on and
things leak. they
start BOOMING out DEMANDS.
and, actually, what they
demand is basically contrary to what-
ever you are or could be.
what's so strange is the sudden
knowledge that they've never
read anything you've writ-
ten, not really read it at
all. or worse, if they have,
they've come to SAVE
you! which means mainly
wanting you to act like everybody
else and be just like them
and their friends. mean-
while they've sucked
you up and wound you up
in a million webs, and
being somewhat of a
feeling person you can't
help but remember their
good side or the side
that at first seemed to be good.and so you find yourself
alone in your
bedroom grabbing your
gut and saying, o, shit
no, not again.
we should have known.
maybe we wanted cotton
candy luck. maybe we
believed. what trash.
we believed like dogs
believe.
melancholia
the history of melancholia
includes all of us.me, I writhe in dirty sheets
while staring at blue walls
and nothing.
I have gotten so used to melancholia
that
I greet it like an old
friend.
I will now do 15 minutes of grieving
for the lost redhead,
I tell the gods.
I do it and feel quite bad
quite sad,
then I rise
CLEANSED
even though nothing is
solved.
that's what I get for kicking
religion in the ass.
I should have kicked the redhead
in the ass
where her brains and her bread and
butter are
at...
but, no, I've felt sad
about everything:
the lost redhead was just another
smash in a lifelong
loss...
I listen to drums on the radio now
and grin.
there is something wrong with me
besides
melancholia.
they, all of them, know
ask the side walk painters of Paris
ask the sunlight on a sleeping dog
ask the 3 pigs
ask the paperboy
ask the music of Donizetti
ask the barber
ask the murderer
ask the man leaning against a wall
ask the preacher
ask the maker of cabinets
ask the pickpocket or the
pawnbroker or the glass blower
or the seller of manure or
the dentist
ask the revolutionist
ask the man who sticks his head in
the mouth of a lion
ask the man who will release the next
atom bomb
ask the man who thinks he's Christ
ask the bluebird who comes home
at night
ask the peeping Tom
ask the man dying of cancer
ask the man who needs a bath
ask the man with one leg
ask the blind
ask the man with the lisp
ask the opium eater
ask the trembling surgeon
ask the leaves you walk upon
ask a rapist or a
streetcar conductor or an old man
pulling weeds in his garden
ask a bloodsucker
ask a trainer of fleas
ask a man who eats fire
ask the most miserable man you can
find in his most
miserable moment
ask a teacher of judo
ask a rider of elephants
ask a leper, a lifer, a lunger
ask a professor of history
ask the man who never cleans his nails
ask a clown or ask the first face you see
in the light of day
ask your father
ask your son and
his son to be
ask me
ask a burned-out bulb in a paper sack
ask the tempted, the damned, the foolish
the wise, the slavering
ask the builders of temples
ask the men who have never worn shoes
ask Jesus
ask the moon
ask the shadows in the closet
ask the moth, the monk, the madman
ask the man who draws cartoons for The New Yorker
ask a goldfish
ask a fern shaking to a tapdance
ask the map of India
ask a kind face
ask the man hiding under your bed
ask man you hate the most in this
world
ask the man who drank with Dylan Thomas
ask the man who laced Jack Sharkey's gloves
ask the sad-faced man drinking coffee
ask the plumber
ask the man who dreams of ostriches every
night
ask the ticket taker at a freak show
ask the counterfeiter
ask the man sleeping in an alley under
a sheet of paper
ask the conquerors of nations and planets
ask the man who has just cut off his finger
ask a bookmark in the bible
ask the water dripping from a faucet while
the phone rings
ask perjury
ask the deep blue paint
ask the parachute jumper
ask the man with the bellyache
ask the divine eye so sleek and swimming
ask the boy wearing tight pants in
the expensive academy
ask the man who slipped in the bathtub
ask the man chewed by the shark
ask the one who sold me the unmatched
gloves
ask these and all those I have left out
ask the fire the fire the fire —
ask even the liars
ask anybody you please at any time
you please on any day you please
whether it's raining or whether
the snow is there or whether
you are stepping out onto a porch
yellow with warm heat
ask this ask that
ask the man with birdshit in his hair
ask the torturer of animals
ask the man who has seen many bullfights in Spain
ask the owners of new Cadillacs
ask the famous
ask the timid
ask the albino
and the statesman
ask the landlords and the poolplayers
ask the phonies
ask the hired killers
ask the bald men and the fat men
and the tall men and the
short men
ask the one-eyed men, the
oversexed and undersexed men
ask the men who read all the newspaper editorials
ask the men who breed roses
ask the men who feel almost no pain
ask the dying
ask the mowers of lawns and the attenders
of football games
ask any of these or all of these
ask ask ask and
they'll all tell you:
a snarling wife on the balustrade is more
than a man can bear.
the screw-game
one of the terrible things is
really
being in bed
night after night
with a woman you no longer
want to screwgamethey get old, they don't look very good
anymore — they even tend to
snore, lose
spirit.
so, in bed, you turn sometimes,
your foot touches hers — god, awful! —
and the night is out there
beyond the curtains
sealing you together
in the
tomb.
and in the morning you go to the
bathroom, pass in the hall, talk,
say odd things; eggs fry, motors
start.
but sitting across
you have 2 strangers
jamming toast into mouths
burning the sullen head and gut with
coffee.
in 10 million places in America
it is the same —
stale lives propped against each
other
and no place to
go.
you get in the car
and you drive to work
and there are more strangers there, most of them
wives and husbands of somebody
else, and besides the guillotine of work, they
flirt and joke and pinch, sometimes tend to
work off a quick screw somewhere—
they can't do it at home—
and then
the drive back home
waiting for Christmas or Labor Day or
Sunday or
something.
Mademoiselle from Armentières
if you gotta have wars
I suppose World War One was the best.
really, you know, both sides were much more enthusiastic,
they really had something to fight for,
they really thought they had something to fight for,
it was bloody and wrong but it was Romantic,
those dirty Germans with babies stuck on the ends of their
bayonets, and so forth, and
there were lots of patriotic songs, and the women loved both the
soldiers
and their money.
the Mexican war and those other wars hardly ever happened.
and the Civil War, that was just a movie.
the wars come too fast now
even the pro-war boys grow weary,
World War Two did them in,
and then Korea, that Korea,
that was dirty, nobody won
except the black marketeers,
and BAM! — then came Vietnam,
I suppose the historians will have a name and a meaning for it,
but the young wised up first
and now the old are getting wise,
almost everybody's anti-war,
no use having a war you can't win,
right or wrong.
hell, I remember when I was a kid it
was 10 or 15 years after World War One was over,
we built model planes of Spads and Fokkers,
we bought Flying Aces magazine at the newsstand
we knew about Baron Manfred von Richthofen
and Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker
and we fought in dream trenches with our dream rifles
and had dream
bayonet fights with the dirty
Hun...
and those movies, full of drama and excitement,
about good old World War one, where
we almost got the Kaiser, we almost kidnapped him
once,
and in the end
we finished off all those spike-helmeted bastards
forever.
the young kids now, they don't build model warplanes
nor do they dream fight in dream rice paddies,
they know it's all useless, ordinary,
just a job like
sweeping the streets or picking up the garbage,
they'd rather go watch a Western or hang out at the
mall or go to the zoo or a football game, they're
already thinking of college and automobiles and wives
and homes and barbecues, they're already trapped
in another kind of dream, another kind of war,
and I guess it won't kiill them as fast, at least not
physically.
it was wrong but World War One was fun for us
it gave us Jean Harlow and James Cagney
and "Mademoiselle from Armenti&egrav;eres, Parley-Voo?"
it gave us
long afternoons and evenings of play
(we didn't realize that many of us were soon to die in
another war)
yes, they fooled us nicely but we were young and loved it —
the lies of our elders —
and see how it has changed —
they can't bullshit
even a kid anymore,
not about all that.
my failure
I think of devils in hell
and stare at a
beautiful vase of
flowers
as the woman in my bedroom
angrily switches the light
on and off.
we have had a very bad
argument
and I sit in here smoking
cigarettes from
India
as on the radio an
opera singer's prayers are
not in my
language.
outside, the window to
my left reveals the night
lights of the
city and I only wish
I had the courage to
break through this simple horror
and make things well
again
but my petty anger
prevents
me.I realize hell is only what we
create,
smoking these cigarettes,
waiting here,
wondering here,
while in the other room
she continues to
sit and
switch the light
on and off,
on and
off.
in other words
the Egyptians loved the cat
were often entombed with it
instead of with the women
and never with the dogbut now
here
good people with
good eyes
are very few
yet fine cats
with great style
lounge about
in the alleys of
the universe.
about
our argument tonight
whatever it was
about
and
no matter
how unhappy
it made us
feel
remember that
there is a
cat
somewhere
adjusting to the
space of itself
with a delightful
grace
in other words
magic persists
without us
no matter what
we may try to do
to spoil it.
Woman's unconsciousness
harbor freeway south
the dead dogs of nowhere bark
as you approach another
traffic accident.
3 cars
one standing on its
grill
the other 2 laying
on their sides
wheels turning slowly.
3 of them
at rest:
strange angles
in the dark.
it has just
happened.
I can see the still
bodies
inside.
thse cars
scattered like toys
against the freeway
center
divider.
like spacecraft
they have landed
there
as you
drive past.
there's no
ambulance yet
no police cars.
the rain began
15 mintues
ago.
things occur.
volcanoes are
1500 times more
powerful than
the first a-
bomb.
the dead dogs of
nowhere
those dogs keep
barking.
those cars
there like that.
obscene.
a dirty trick.
it's like
somebody dying
of a heart
attack
in a crowded
elevator.
everybody
watching.
I finally
reach my street
pull into
the driveway.
park.
get out.
she meets me
halfway
to the door.
"I don't know
what to do,"
she says,"the
stove
went out."
Carson McCullers
she died of alcoholism
wrapped in a blanket
on a deck chair
on an ocean
steamer.
all her books of
terrified loneliness.
all her books about
the cruelty
of loveless love
were all that was left
of her
as the stroling vacationer
discovered her body
notified the captain
and she was quickly dispatched
to somewhere else
on the ship
as everything
continued jsut
as
she had written it.
when Hugo Wolf went mad
Hugo Wolf went mad while eating an onion
and writing his 253rd song; it was rainy
April and the worms came out of the ground
humming Tannhäuser, and he spilled his milk
with his ink, and his blood fell out to the walls
and he howled and he roared and he screamed, and
down-
stairs his landlady said, I knew it, that rotten son
of a
bitch has dummied up his brain, he's jacked-off
his last piece
of music and now I'll never get the rent, and some-
day he'll be fam-
ous and they'll bury him in the rain, but right now
I wish he'd shut
up that god damned screaming — for my money he's
a silly pansy jackass
and when they move him out of here, I hope they
move in a good solid fish-
erman
or a hangman
or a seller of
biblical tracts.
the souls of dead animals
after the slaughterhouse
there was a bar around the corner
and I sat in there
and watched the sun go down
through the window,
a window that overlooked a lot
full of tall dry weeds.I never showered with the boys at the
plant
after work
so I smelled of sweat and
blood.
the smell of sweat lessens after a
while
but the blood-smell begins to fulminate
and gain power.
I smoked cigarettes and drank beer
until I felt good enough to
board the bus
with the souls of all those dead
animals riding with
me;
heads would turn slightly
women would rise and move away from
me.
when I got off the bus
I only had a block to walk
and one stairway up to my
room
where I'd turn on my radio and
light a cigarette
and nobody minded me
at all.
German bar
I had lost the last race big
somebody had stolen my coat
I could feel the flu coming on
and my tires were
low. I went in to get a
beer at the German bar
but the waitress was having a fit
her heart strangled by disappointment
grief and loss.
women get troubled all at once,
you know. I left a tip
and got out.nobody wins.
ask Caesar.
the girls and the birds
the girls were young
and worked the
streets
but often couldn't
score, they
ended up
in my hotel
room
3 or 4 of
them
sucking at the
wine,
hair in face,
runs in stockings,
cursing, telling
stories...somehow
those were
peaceful
nights
but really
they reminded me
of long
ago
when I was a
boy
watching my grand-
mother's
canaries make
droppings
into their
seed
and into their
water
and the
canaries were
beautiful
and
chattered
but
never
sang.
the girl on the escalator
as I go to the escalator
a young fellow and a lovely young girl
are ahead of me.
her pants, her blouse are skin-
tight.
as we ascend
she rests one foot on the
step above and her behind
assumes a fascinating shape.
the young man looks all
around.
he appears worried.
he looks at me.
I look
away.no, young man, I am not looking,
I am not looking at your girl's behind.
don't worry, I respect her and I respect you.
in fact, I respect everything: the flowers that gorw, young women,
children, all the animals, our precious complicated
universe, everyone and everything.
I sense that the young man now feels
better and I am glad for
him. I know his problem: the girl has
a mother, a father, maybe a sister or
brother,c and undoubtedly a bunch of
unfriendly relatives and she likes to
dance and flirt and she likes to
go to the movies and sometimes she talks
and chews gum at the same time and
she enjoys really dumb TV shows and
she thinks she's a budding actress and she
doesn't always look so good and she has a
terrible temper and sometimes she almost goes
crazy and she can talk for hours on the
telephone and she wants to go to
Europe some summer soon and she wants you to
buy her a near-new Mercedes and she's in love with
Mel Gibson and her mother is a
drunk and her father is a racist
and sometimes when she drinks too much she
snores and she's often cold in bed and
she has a guru, a guy who met Christ
in the desert in 1978, and she wants to
be a dancer and she's unemployed and she
gets migraine headaches every time she
eats sugar or cheese.
I watch him take her
up
the escalator, his arm
protectively around her
waist, thinking he's
lucky,
thinking he's a real special
guy, thinking that
nobody in the world has
what he has.
and he's right, terribly
terribly right, his arm around
that warm bucket of
intestine,
bladder,
kidneys,
lungs,
salt,
sulphur,
carbon dioxide
and
phlegm.
lotsa
luck.
the shit shits
yes, it's dark in here.
can't open the door.
can't open the jam lid.
can't find a pair of socks that match.
I was born in Andernach in 1920 and never thought it
would be like this.at the races today I was standing in the 5-win line.
this big fat guy with body odor
kept jamming his binoculars into my ass and I turned and
said,
"pardon me, sir, could you please stop jamming those goddamned
binocs into my ass?"
he just looked at me with little pig eyes—
rather pink with olive pits for pupils—
and the eyes just kept looking at me until I stepped away and then
got sick, vomited into a
trash can.
I keep getting letters from an uncle in Andernach who must be
95 years old and he keeps asking,
"my body, why don't you WRITE?"
what can I write him? unfortunately
there is nothing that I can write.
I pull on my shorts and they rip.
sleep is impossible, I mean good sleep. I just get
small spurts of it, and then back to the job where the foreman
comes by:
"Chinaski, for a pieceworker you crawl like a snail!"
I'm sick and I'm tired and I don't know where to go or what to do.
well, at lunchtime we all ride down the elevator together
making kokes and laughing
and then we sit in the employees' cafeteria making jokes and
laughing and eating the recooked food;
first they buy it then they fry it
then they reheat it then they sell it, can't be a germ left in there
or a vitamin either.
but we joke and laugh
otherwise we would start
screaming.
on Saturday and Sunday when I don't have money to go to the track
I just lay in bed.
I never get out of bed.
I don't want to go to a movie;
it is shameful for a full-grown man to go to a movie alone.
and women are less than nothing. they terrify
me.
I wonder what Andernach is like?
I think that if they would let me just stay in bed I could
get well or strong or at least feel better;
but it's always up and back to the machine,
searching for stockings that match,
shorts that won't tear,
looking at my face in the mirror, disgusted with
my face.
my uncle, what is he thinking with his crazy
letters?
we are all little forgotten pieces of shit
only we walk and talk
laugh
make jokes
and
the shit shits.
some day I will tell that foreman off.
I will tell everybody off.
and walk down to the end of the road and
make swans out of the blackbirds and
lions out of berry leaves.
the beautiful lady
we are gathered here now
to bury her in this
poem.she did not marry an unemployed wino who
beat her every
night.
her several children will never wear
snot-stained shirts
or torn dresses.
the beautiful lady
simply
calmly
died.
and may the clean dirt of this poem
bury
her.
her and her womb
and her jewels
and her combs and her
poems
and her pale blue eyes
and her
grinning
rich
frightened
husband.
eat your heart out
I've come by, she says, to tell you
that this is it. I'm not kidding, it's
over. this is it.I sit on the couch watching her arrange
her long red hair before my bedroom
mirror.
she pulls her hair up and
piles it on top of her head —
she lets her eyes look at
my eyes—
then she drops the hair and
lets it fall down in front of her face.
we go to bed and I hold her
speechlessly from the back
my arm around her neck
I touch her wrists and hands
feel up to
her elbows
no further.
she gets up.
this is it, she says,
eat your heart out. you
got any rubber bands?
I don't know.
here's one, she says,
this will do. well,
I'm going.
I get up and walk her
to the door.
just as she leaves
she says,
I want you to buy me
some high-heeled shoes
with tall thin spikes,
black high-heeled shoes.
no, I want them red.
I watch her walk down the cement walk
under the trees
she walks all right and
as the poinsettias drip in the sun
I close the door.
the girls at the green hotel
are more beautiful than
movie stars
and they lounge on the
lawn
sunbathing
and one sits in a short
dress and high
heels, legs crossed
exposing miraculous
thighs.
she has a bandanna
on her head
and smokes a
long cigarette.
traffic slows
almost stops.the girls ignore
the traffic.
they are half
asleep in the afternoon
they are whores
they are whores without
souls
and they are magic
because they lie
about nothing.
I get in my car
wait for traffic to
clear,
drive across the street
to the green hotel
to my favorite:
she is
sunbathing on the
lawn nearest the
curb.
"hello," I say.
she turns eyes like
imitation diamonds
up at me.
her face has no
expression.
I drop my latest
book of poems
out the car
window.
it falls
by her side.
I shift into
low,
drive off.
there'll be some
laughs
tonight.
3. Man's love for women is the will to unconsciousness
magical mystery tour
I am in this low-slung sports car
painted a deep, rich yellow
driving under an Italian sun.
I have a British accent.
I'm wearing dark shades
an expensive silk shirt.
there's no dirt under my
fingernails.
the radio plays Vivaldi
and there are two women with
me
one with raven hair
the other a blonde.
they have small breasts and
beautiful legs
and they laugh at everything I
say.as we drive up a steep road
the blonde squeezes my leg
and nestles closer
while raven hair
leans across and nibbles my
ear.
we stop for lunch at a quaint
rustic inn.
there is more laughter
before lunch
during lunch and after
lunch.
after lunch we will have a
flat tire on the other side of
the mountain
and the blonde will change the
tire
while
raven hair
photographs me
lighting my pipe
leaning against a tree
the perfect background
perfectly at peace
with
sunlight
flowers
clouds
birds
everywhere.
schoolyards of forever
the schoolyard was a horror show: the bullies, the
freaks
the beatings up against the wire fence
our schoolmates watching
glad that they were not the victim;
we were beaten well and good
time after time
and afterwards were
followed
taunted all the way home where often
more beatings awaited us.
in the schoolyard the bullies ruled well,
and in the restrooms and
at the water fountains they
owned and disowned us at will
but in our own way we held strong
never begged for mercy
we took it straight on
silently
we were toughened by that horror
a horror that would later serve us in good stead
and then strangely
as we grew stronger and bolder
the bullies gradually began to back off.
grammar school
jr. high
high school
we grew up like odd neglected plants
gathering nourishment where we could
blossoming in time
and later when the bullies tried to befriend us
we turned them away.
then college
where under a new regime
the bullies melted almost entirely away
we became more and they became much less.
but there were new bullies now
the professors
who had to be taught the hard lessons we'd learned
we glowed madly
it was grand and easy
the coeds dismayed at our gamble
and our nerve
but we looked right through them
to the larger fight waiting out there.
then when we arrived out there
it was back up against the fence
new bullies once again
deeply entrenched by society
bosses and the like
who kept us in our place for decades to come
so we had to begin all over again
in the street
and in small rooms of madness
rooms that were always dim at noon
it lasted and lasted for years like that
but our former training enabled us to endure
and after what seemed like
an eternity
we finally found the tunnel at the end of the light.
it was a small enough victory
no songs of braggadocio because
we knew we had won very little from very little,
and that we had fought so hard to be free
just for the simple sweetness of it.
but even now we still can see the grade school janitor
with his broom
and sleeping face;
we can still see the little girls with their curls
their hair so carefully brushed and shining
in their freshly starched dresses;
see the faces of the teachers
fat folded forlorn;
hear the bell at recess;
see the grass and the baseball diamond;
see the volleyball court and its white net;
feel the sun always up and shining there
spilling down on us like the juice of a giant tangerine.
and we did not soon forget
Herbie Ashcroft
our principal tormentor
his fists as hard as rocks
as we crouched trapped against the steel fence
as we heard the sounds of automobiles passing but not stopping
and as the world went about doing what it does
we asked for no mercy
and we returned the next day and the next and the next
to our classes
the little girls looking so calm and secure
as they sat upright in their seats
in that room of blackboards and chalk
while we hung on grimly to our stubborn disdain
for all the horror and all the strife
and waited for something better
to come along and comfort us
in that never-to-be-forgotten
grammar school world.
A Love Poem
all the women
all their kisses the
different ways they love and
talk and need.their ears they all have
ears and
throats and dresses
and shoes and
automobiles and ex-
husbands.
mostly the women are very
warm they remind me of
buttered toast with the butter
melted
in.
there is a look in the
eye: they have been
taken they have been
fooled. I don't quite know what to
do for
them.
I am
a fair cook a good
listener
but I never learned to
dance—I was busy
then with larger things.
but I've enjoyed their different
beds
smoking cigarettes
staring at the
ceilings. I was neither vicious nor
unfair. only
a student.
I know they all have these
feet and barefoot they go across the floor as
I watch their bashful buttocks in the
dark. I know that they like me, some even
love me
but I love very
few.
some give me oranges and vitamin pills;
others talk quietly of
childhood and fathers and
landscapes; some are almost
crazy but none of them are without
meaning; some love
well, others not
so; the best at sex are not always the
best in other
ways; each has limits as I have
limits and we learn
each other
quickly.
all the women all
women all the
bedrooms
the rugs the
photos the
curtains, it's
something like a church only
at times there's
laughter.
those ears those
arms those
elbows those eyes
looking the fondness and
the wanting I have been
held I have been
held.
prayer in bad weather
by God, I don't know what to
do.
they're so nice to have around.
they have a way of playing with
the balls.
and looking at the cock very
seriously
turning it
tweeking it
examining each part
as their long hair falls on
your belly.it's not the fucking and sucking
alone that reaches into a man
and softens him, it's the extras,
it's all the extras.
now it's raining tonight
and there's nobody
they are elsewhere
examining things
in new bedrooms
in new moods
or maybe in old
bedrooms.
anyhow, it's raining tonight,
one hell of a dashing, pouring
rain...
very little to do.
I've read the newspaper
paid the gas bill
the electric co.
the phone bill.
it keeps raining.
they soften a man
and then let him swim
in his own juice.
I need an old-fashioned whore
at the door tonight
closing her green umbrella,
drops of moonlit rain on her
purse, saying, "shit, man,
can't you get better music
than that on your radio?
and turn up the heat..."
it's always when a man's swollen
with love and everything
else
that it keeps raining
splattering
flooding
rain
good for the trees and the
grass and the air...
good for things that
live alone.
I would give anything
for a females hand on me
tonight.
they soften a man and
then leave him
listening to the rain.
Verdi
and
so
we suck on a cigar
and a beer
attempting to mend the love
wounds of the soul.a beer.
a cigar.
I listen to Verdi
scratch my hindquarters
and
stare out of
a cloud of
blue
smoke.
have you ever been to
Venice?
Madrid?
the stress of continually facing the
lowered
horn
is wearing.
then too
I sometimes think of a
less stressful kind of
love—
it can and should be so
easy
like falling asleep
in a chair or
like a church full of
windows.
sad enough,
I wish only for that careless love
which is sweet
gentle
and which is
now
(like
this light
over my head)
there only to serve me
while I
smoke smoke smoke
out of a certain center dressed
in an old brown shirt.
but I am caught under a pile of
bricks;
poetry is shot in the head
and walks down the alley
pissing on its legs.
friends, stop writing of
breathing
in this sky of fire.
small children,
walk well behind us.
but now Verdi
abides with the
wallpaper
with beerlove,
with the taste of wet gold as
my fingers dabble in ashes
as strange young ladies walk outside
my window
dreaming of broomsticks,
palaces
and
blueberry pie.
i was glad
I was glad I had money in the Savings and Loan
Friday afternoon hungover
I didn't have a job
I was glad I had money in the Savings and Loan
I didn't know how to play a guitar
Friday afternoon hungover
Friday afternoon hungover
across the street from Norm's
across the street from The Red Fez
I was glad I had money in the Savings and Loan
split with my girlfriend and blue and demented
I was glad to have my passbook and stand in line
I watched the buses run up Vermont
I was too crazy to get a job as a driver of buses
and I didn't even look at the young girls
I got dizzy standing in line but I
just kept thinking I have money in this building
Friday afternoon hungover
I didn't know how to play the piano
or even hustle a damnfool job in a carwash
I was glad I had money in the Savings and Loan
finally I was at the window
it was my Japanese girl
she smiled at me as if I were some amazing god
back again, eh? she said and laughed
as I showed her my withdrawal slip and my passbook
as the buses ran up and down Vermont
the camels trotted across the Sahara
she gave me the money and I took the money
Friday afternoon hungover
I walked into the market and got a cart
and I threw sausages and eggs and bacon and bread in there
I threw beer and salami and relish and pickles and mustard in there
I looked at the young housewives wiggling casually
I threw t-bone steaks and porterhouse and cube steaks in my cart
and tomatoes and cucumbers and oranges in my cart
Friday afternoon hungover
split with my girlfriend and blue and demented
I was glad I had money in the Savings and Loan
society should realize...
you consult psychiatrists and philosophers
when things aren't going well
and whores when they are.
the whores are there for young boys and old
men; to the young boys they say,
"don't be frightened, honey, here I'll put t
in for you."
and for the old guys
they put on an act
like you're really hooking it home.
society should realize the value of the
whore—I mean, those girls who really enjoy their
work—those who make it almost an
art form.I'm thinking of the time
in a Mexican whorehouse
this gal with her little bowl and her rag
washing my dick,
and it got hard and she laughed and I
laughed and she
kissed it, gently and slowly, then she walked over and
spread out
on the bed
and I got on and we worked easily, no effort, no
tension, and some guy beat on the door and
yelled,
"Hey! what the hell's going on in there?
Hurry it up!"
but it was like a Mahler symphony—you just don't
rush
it.
when I finished and she came back, there was
the bowl and the rag again
and we both laughed; then she kissed it
gently and
slowly, and I got up and put my clothes back on and
walked out—
"Jesus, buddy, what the hell were ya doin' in
there?"
"Fuckin'," I told the gentleman
and walked down the hall and down the steps and stood
outside in the road and lit one of those
sweet Mexican cigarettes in the moonlight.
liberated and human again
for a mere $3, I
loved the night, Mexico and
myself.
the crunch
too much
too littletoo fat
too thin
or nobody.
laughter or
tears
haters
lovers
strangers with faces like
the backs of
thumb tacks
armies running through
streets of blood
waving winebottles
bayoneting and fucking
virgins.
or an old guy in a cheap room
with a photograph of M. Monroe.
there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock.
people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.
people just are not good to each other
one on one
the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.
we are afraid.
our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners.
it hasn't told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.
or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone
untouched
unspoken to
watering a plant.
people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.
I suppose they never will be.
I don't ask them to be.
but sometimes I think about
it.
the beads will swing
the clouds will cloud
and the killer will behead the child
like taking a bite out of an ice cream cone.
too much
too little
too fat
too thin
or nobody
more haters than lovers.
people are not good to each other.
perhaps if they were
our deaths would not be so sad.
meanwhile I look at young girls
stems
flowers of chance.
there must be a way.
surely there must be a way we have not yet
thought of.
who put this brain inside of me?
it cries
it demands
it says that there is a chance.
it will not say
"no."
woman on the street
her shoes themselves
would light my room
like many candles.she walks like all things
shining on glass,
like all things
that make a difference.she walks away.
shoes
when you're young
a pair of
female
high-heeled shoes
just sitting
alone
in the closet
can fire your
bones;
when you're old
it's just
a pair of shoes
without
anybody
in them
and
just as
well.
I know you
you with long hair, legs crossed high, sitting at the end of
the bar, you like a butcher knife against my throat
as the nightingale sings elsewhere while
laughter mingles with the roach's hiss.
I know you as
the piano player in the restaurant who plays badly,
his mouth a tiny cesspool and his eyes little wet rolls of
toilet paper.
you rode behind me on my bicycle as I pumped toward Venice as
a boy, I knew you were there, even in that brisk wind I smelled
your
breath.
I knew you in the love bed as you whispered lies of passion while
your
nails dug me into you.
I saw you adored by crowds in Spain while pigtail boys with
swords
coloured the sun for your glory.
I saw you complete the circle of friend, enemy, celebrity and
stranger as the fox ran through the sun carrying its heart in its
mouth.
those madmen I fought in the back alleys of bars were
you.
you, yes, heard Plato's last words.
not too many mornings ago I found my old cat in the yard,
dry tongue stuck out awry as if it had never belonged, eyes tangled,
eyelids soft yet, I lifted her, daylight shining upon my
fingers and her fur, my ignorant existence roaring against the
hedges and the flowers.
I know you, you wait while the fountains gush and the scales weigh,
you tiresome daughter-of-a-bitch, come on in, the door is
open.