the swans drown in bilge water,
take down the signs,
test the poisons,
barricade the cow
from the bull,
the peony from the sun,
take the lavender kisses from my night,
put the symphonies out on the streets
like beggars,
get the nails ready,
flog the backs of the saints,
stun frogs and mice for the cat,
burn the enthralling paintings,
piss on the dawn,
my love
is dead.
for Jane
225 days under grass
and you know more than I.
they have long taken your blood,
you are a dry stick in a basket.
is this how it works?
in this room
the hours of love
still make shadows.
when you left
you took almost
everything.
I kneel in the nights
before tigers
that will not let me be.
what you were
will not happen again.
the tigers have found me
and I do not care.
eulogy to a hell of a dame
dame
some dogs who sleep at night
must dream of bones
and I remember your bones
in flesh
and best
in that dark green dress
and those high-heeled bright
black shoes,
you always cursed when you
drank,
your hair coming down you
wanted to explode out of
what was holding you:
rotten memories of a
rotten
past, and
you finally got
out
by dying,
leaving me with the
rotten
present;
you’ve been dead
28 years
yet I remember you
better than any of
the rest;
you were the only one
who understood
the futility of the
arrangement of
all the others were only
displeased with
trivial segments,
carped
nonsensically about
nonsense;
Jane, you were
killed by
knowing too much.
here’s a drink
to your bones
that
this dog
still
dreams about.
barfly
Jane, who has been dead for 31 years,
never could have
imagined that I would write a screenplay of our drinking
days together
and
that it would be made into a movie
and
that a beautiful movie star would play her
part.
I can hear Jane now: “A beautiful movie star? oh,
for Christ’s sake!”
Jane, that’s show biz, so go back to sleep, dear, because
no matter how hard they tried they
just couldn’t find anybody exactly like
you.
and neither can
I.
was Li Po wrong?
you know what Li Po said when asked if he’d rather be an
Artist or Rich?
“I’d rather be Rich,” he replied, “for Artists can usually be found
sitting on the doorsteps of the
Rich.”
I’ve sat on the doorsteps of some expensive and
unbelievable homes
myself
but somehow I always managed to disgrace myself and / or insult
my Rich hosts
(mostly after drinking large quantities of their fine
liquor).
perhaps I was afraid of the Rich?
all I knew then was poverty and the very poor,
and I felt instinctively that the Rich shouldn’t be so
Rich,
that it was some kind of clever
twist of fate
based on something rotten and
unfair.
of course, one could say the same thing
about being poor,
only there were so many poor, it all seemed completely
out of proportion.
and so when I, as an Artist, visited the
homes of the Rich, I felt ashamed to be
there, and I drank too much of their fine wines,
broke their expensive glassware and antique dishes,
burned cigarette holes in their Persian rugs and
mauled their wives,
reacting badly to the whole damned
situation.
yet I had no political or social solution.
I was just a lousy house guest,
I guess,
and after a while
I protected both myself and the Rich
by rejecting their
invitations
and everybody felt much better after
that.
I went back to
drinking alone,
breaking my own cheap glassware,
filling the room with cigar
smoke and feeling
wonderful
instead of feeling trapped,
used,
pissed on,
fucked.
the night I saw George Raft in Vegas
I bet on #6, I try red, I stare at the women’s legs and breasts,
I wonder what Chekhov would do, and over in the corner three men with
blue plates sit eating the carnage of my youth, they have beards
and look very much like Russians and I pat an imaginary pistol over
my left tit and try to smile like George Raft sizing up a French
tart. I play
the field, I pull out dollars like turnips from the good earth, the lights
blaze and nobody says stop.
Hank, says my whore, for Christ’s sake you’re losing everything except me,
and I say don’t forget, baby, I’m a shipping clerk. what’ve I got to lose
but a ball of string?
the gentlemen in the corner who look like Russians get up, knock
their plates and cups on the floor and wipe their mouths on the tablecloth.
some belch (and one farts). they laugh evilly and leave without anyone bothering
them. a ribbed and moiled cat comes out of somewhere,
begins licking the plates on the floor and then jumps up on the
table and walks around like his feet are wet.
I try black. the croupier’s eyes dart like beetles. he makes futile
almost habitual movements to brush them away.
I switch back to red. I look around for George Raft and spill my drink
against my chest. Hank, says my whore, let’s get out of here!
well, at least,
I say, I ought to get a blow job out of this. you needn’t get filthy,
the whore
says. I say, baby, I was born filthy. I try #14.
DEATH COMES SLOWLY LIKE ANTS TO A FALLEN FIG.
mirrors enclose us, I say to the croupier, ignoring the scenery of our despair.
I slap away a filthy thing that runs across my mouth. the cat
leaps and snatches it up as it spins upon its back kicking its
thousand legs.
then George Raft walks in. hello kid, he says, back again? I place
my last few coins on the chest of a dead elephant.
the lightning flares, they are stabbing grapefruit in the backroom, somebody
drops a glove and the place, the whole place, goes up in smoke.
we walk back t
o the car and fall asleep.
I am eaten by butterflies
maybe I’ll win the Irish Sweepstakes
maybe I’ll go nuts
maybe Harcourt Brace will call
or maybe unemployment insurance or
a rich lesbian at the top of a hill.
maybe reincarnation as a frog…
or $70,000 found floating in a plastic sack
in the bathtub.
I am a thin man being eaten by
green trees
butterflies and
you.
turn turn
light the lamp
my teeth ache the teeth of my soul ache
I can’t sleep I
pray for the dead
the white mice
engines on fire
blood on a green gown in an operating room
and I am caught
ow ow
wild: my body being there filled with nothing but
me
me caught halfway between suicide and
old age
hustling in factories next to the
young boys
keeping pace
burning my blood like gasoline and
making the foreman
grin.
my poems are only bits of scratchings
on the floor of a
cage.
(uncollected)
the veryest
here comes the fishhead singing
here comes the baked potato in drag
here comes nothing to do all day long
here comes another night of no sleep
here comes the phone ringing the wrong voice
here comes a termite with a banjo
here comes a flagpole with blank eyes
here comes a cat and a dog wearing nylons
here comes a machine gun singing
here comes bacon burning in the pan
here comes a voice saying something dull with authority
here comes a newspaper stuffed with small red birds
with flat brown beaks
here comes a woman carrying a torch
a grenade
a deathly love
here comes victory carrying one bucket of guts
and one bucket of blood
while stumbling over the berry bush
and here comes a little lamb
and here comes Mary at last
and the sheet hangs out the window
and the bombers head east west north south
get lost
get tossed like salad
all the fish in the sea line up and form
one line
one long line
one very long long line
the veryest longest line you could ever imagine
and we get lost
walking past purple mountains.
we walk lost
bare at last like the knife blade
or the electric shock
having given
having spit it out like an unexpected olive seed
as the girl at the call ser vice
screams over the phone:
“don’t call back! you sound like a jerk!”
(uncollected)
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 walking 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
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.
oh, yes
there are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes de cades
to realize this
and most often
when you do
it’s too late
and there’s nothing worse
than
too late.
poop
I remember, he told me, that when I was 6 or
7 years old my mother was always taking me
to the doctor and saying, “he hasn’t pooped.”
she was always asking me, “have you
pooped?”
it seemed to be her favorite question.
and, of course, I couldn’t lie, I had real problems
pooping.
I was all knotted up inside.
my parents did that to me.
I looked at those huge beings, my father,
my mother, and they seemed really stupid.
sometimes I thought they were just pretending
to be stupid because nobody could really be that
stupid.
but they weren’t pretending.
they had me all knotted up inside like a pretzel.
I mean, I had to live with them, they told
me what to do and how to do it and when.
they fed, housed and clothed me.
and worst of all, there was no other place for
me to go, no other choice:
I had to stay with them.
I mean, I didn’t know much at that age
but I could sense that they were lumps
of flesh and little else.
dinnertime was the worst, a nightmare
of slurps, spittle and idiotic conversation.
I looked straight down at my plate and tried
to swallow my food but
it all turned to glue inside.
I couldn’t digest my parents or the food.
that must have been it, for it was hell for me
to poop.
“have you pooped?”
and there I’d be in the doctor’s office once again.
he had a little more sense than my parents but
not much.
“well, well, my little man, so you haven’t pooped?”
he was fat with bad breath and body odor and
had a pocket watch with a large gold chain
that dangled across his gut.
I thought, I bet he poops a load.
and I looked at my mother.
she had large buttocks,
I could picture her on the toilet,
sitting there a little cross-eyed, pooping.
she was so placid, so
like a pigeon.
poopers both, I knew it in my heart.
disgusting people.
“well, little man, you just can’t poop,
huh?”
he made a little joke of it: he could,
she could, the world could.
I couldn’t.
“well, now, we’re going to give you
these pills.
and if they don’t work, then guess
what?”
I didn’t answer.
“come on, little man, tell me.”
all right, I decided to say it.
I wanted to get out of there:
“an enema.”
“an enema,” he smiled.
then he turned to my mother.
“and are you all right, dear?”
“oh, I’m fine, doctor!”
sure she was.
she pooped whenever she wanted.
then we would leave the office.
“isn’t the doctor a nice man?”