I remember the hospital stenches from when
I was a boy and when I was a man and now
as an old man
I sit in my tin chair waiting.
then an orderly
a young man of 23 or 24
pushes in a piece of equipment.
it looks like a hamper of
freshly done laundry
but I can’t be sure.
the orderly is awkward.
he is not deformed
but his legs work
in an unruly fashion
as if disassociated from the
motor workings of the brain.
he is in blue, dressed all in blue,
pushing,
pushing his load.
ungainly little boy blue.
then he turns his head and yells at
the receptionist at the x-ray window:
“anybody wants me, I’ll be in 76
for about 20 minutes!”
his face reddens as he yells,
his mouth forms a down
turned crescent like a
pumpkin’s halloween mouth.
then he’s gone into some doorway,
probably 76.
not a very prepossessing chap.
lost as a human,
long gone down some
numbing road.
but
he’s healthy
he’s healthy.
HE’S HEALTHY!
the nurses
at the hospital that I have been
going to
the nurses seem
overweight.
they are bulky in their
white dresses
fat above the hips
and down
through the buttocks
to the heavy
legs.
they all appear to be
47 years old,
walk wide-legged
like the old fullbacks
of the
1930s.
they seem distanced
from their profession.
they attend to their duties
but with a
lack of
contact.
I pass them in the
walkways
and in the
corridors.
they never look into
my eyes.
I forgive them their
heavy-shoed
walk,
for the space that they
must forge
between themselves and
each patient.
for these ladies are truly
over-fed:
they have seen
too much
death.
cancer
half-past nowhere
alone
in the crumbling
tower of myself
stumbling in this the
darkest
hour
the last gamble has been
lost
as I
reach
for
bone
silence.
first poem back
64 days and nights in that
place, chemotherapy,
antibiotics, blood running into
the catheter.
leukemia.
who, me?
at age 72 I had this foolish thought that
I’d just die peacefully in my sleep
but
the gods want it their way.
I sit at this machine, shattered,
half alive,
but I am back for the moment only;
while nothing seems the same.
I am not reborn, only
chasing
a few more days, a few more nights,
like
this
one.
tired in the afterdusk
smoking a cigarette and noting a mosquito who has
flattened out against the wall and
died
as organ music from centuries back plays through
my black radio
as downstairs my wife watches a rented video on
the VCR.
this is the space between spaces, this is when the
ever-war relents for just a moment, this is when
you consider the inconsiderate years:
the fight has been wearing…but, at times,
interesting, such as
resting quietly here in the
afterdusk as the sound of the centuries run
through my body…
this
old dog
resting in the shade
peaceful
but ready.
again
now the territory is taken,
the sacrificial lambs have been slain,
as history is scratched again on the sallow walls,
as the bankers scurry to survive,
as the young girls paint their hungry lips,
as the dogs sleep in temporary peace,
as the shadow gets ready to fall,
as the oceans gobble the poisons of man,
as heaven and hell dance in the anteroom,
it’s begin again and go again,
it’s bake the apple,
buy the car,
mow the lawn,
pay the tax,
hang the toilet paper,
clip the nails,
listen to the crickets,
blow up the balloons,
drink the orange juice,
forget the past,
pass the mustard,
pull down the shades,
take the pills,
check the air in the tires,
lace on the gloves,
the bell is ringing,
the pearl is in the oyster,
the rain falls
as the shadow gets ready to fall again.
so now?
the words have come and gone,
I sit ill.
the phone rings, the cats sleep.
Linda vacuums.
I am waiting to live,
waiting to die.
I wish I could ring in some bravery.
it’s a lousy fix
but the tree outside doesn’t know:
I watch it moving with the wind
in the late afternoon sun.
there’s nothing to declare here,
just a waiting.
each faces it alone.
Oh, I was once young,
Oh, I was once unbelievably
young!
blue
blue fish, the blue night, a blue knife—
everything is blue.
and my cats are blue: blue fur, blue claws,
blue whiskers, blue eyes.
my bed lamp shines
blue.
inside, my blue heart pumps blue blood.
my fingernails, my toenails are
blue
and around my bed floats a
blue ghost.
even the taste inside my mouth is
blue.
and I am alone and dying and
blue.
a summation
more wasted days,
gored days,
evaporated days.
more squandered days,
days pissed away,
days slapped around,
mutilated.
the problem is
that the days add up
to a life,
my life.
I sit here
73 years old
knowing I have been badly
fooled,
picking at my teeth
with a toothpick
which
breaks.
dying should come easy:
like a freight train you
don’t hear when
your back is
turned.
sun coming down
no one is sorry I am leaving,
not even I;
but there should be a minstrel
or at least a glass of wine.
it bothers the young most, I think:
an unviolent slow death.
still it makes any man dream;
you wish for an old sailing ship,
the white salt-crusted sail
and the sea shaking out hints of immortality.
sea in the nose
sea in the hair
sea in the marrow, in the eyes
and yes, there in the chest.
will we miss
the love of a woman or music or food
or the gambol of the great mad muscled
horse, kicking clods and destinies
high and away
in just one moment of the sun coming down?
but now it’s my turn
and there’s no majesty in it
because there was no majesty
before it
and each of us, like worms bitten out of apples,
deserves no reprieve.
death enters my mouth
and snakes along my teeth
and I wonder if I am frightened of
this voiceless, unsorrowful dying that is
like the drying of a rose?
twilight musings
the drifting of the mind.
the slow loss, the leaking away.
one’s demise is not very interesting.
from my bed I watch 3 birds through the east window:
one coal black, one dark brown, the
other yellow.
as night falls I watch the red lights on the bridge blink on and off.
I am stretched out in bed with the covers up to my chin.
I have no idea who won at the racetrack today.
I must go back into the hospital tomorrow.
why me?
why not?
my last winter
I see this final storm as nothing very serious in the sight of
the world;
there are so many more important things to worry about and to
consider.
I see this final storm as nothing very special in the sight of
the world
and it shouldn’t be thought of as special.
other storms have been much greater, more dramatic.
I see this final storm approaching and calmly
my mind waits.
I see this final storm as nothing very serious in the sight of
the world.
the world and I have seldom agreed on most
matters but
now we can agree.
so bring it on, bring on this final storm.
I have patiently waited for too long now.
like a dolphin
dying has its rough edge.
no escaping now.
the warden has his eye on me.
his bad eye.
I’m doing hard time now.
in solitary.
locked down.
I’m not the first nor the last.
I’m just telling you how it is.
I sit in my own shadow now.
the face of the people grows dim.
the old songs still play.
hand to my chin, I dream of
nothing while my lost childhood
leaps like a dolphin
in the frozen sea.
the bluebird
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see
you.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he’s
in there.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody’s asleep.
I say, I know that you’re there,
so don’t be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he’s singing a little
in there, I haven’t quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it’s nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don’t
weep, do
you?
if we take—
if we take what we can see—
the engines driving us mad,
lovers finally hating;
this fish in the market
staring upward into our minds;
flowers rotting, flies web-caught;
riots, roars of caged lions,
clowns in love with dollar bills,
nations moving people like pawns;
daylight thieves with beautiful
nighttime wives and wines;
the crowded jails,
the commonplace unemployed,
dying grass, 2-bit fires;
men old enough to love the grave.
These things, and others, in content
show life swinging on a rotten axis.
But they’ve left us a bit of music
and a spiked show in the corner,
a jigger of scotch, a blue necktie,
a small volume of poems by Rimbaud,
a horse running as if the devil were
twisting his tail
over bluegrass and screaming, and then,
love again
like a streetcar turning the corner
on time
the city waiting,
the wine and the flowers,
the water walking across the lake
and summer and winter and summer and summer
and winter again.
alphabetical index of poem titles
about competition (sifting through the madness…)
about pain (War All the Time
about the PEN conference (You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense)
advice for some young man in the year 2064 A.D. (uncollected)
afternoons into night (uncollected)
again (Betting on the Muse)
American Flag Shirt, the (The People Look Like Flowers at Last)
an empire of coins (Betting on the Muse)
angel who pushed his wheelchair, the (What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire)
area of pause, the (The Last Night of the Earth Poems)
art (play the piano drunk…)
bad fix (Dangling in the Tournefortia)
bakers of 1935, the (What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire)
bang bang (Mockingbird Wish Me Luck)
barfly (The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain)
batting slump (Open All Night)
beagle (The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps)
Beast, The (The Rooming house Madrigals)
beautiful lady, the (Bone Palace Ballet)
big one, the (Bone Palace Ballet)
big time loser (Open All Night)
birds, the (The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain)
blue (Come On In!)
blue beads and bones (What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the F
ire)
bluebird, the (The Last Night of the Earth Poems)
bow wow love (uncollected)
boy and his dog, a (What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire) 247 Bruckner (2) (Open All Night)
burning of the dream, the (Septuagenarian Stew)
butterflies (What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire)
cancer (Come On In!)
car wash (The Last Night of the Earth Poems)
Carson McCullers (The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps)
clean well-lighted place, a (Slouching Toward Nirvana)
close encounters of another kind (play the piano drunk…)
closing time (Come On In!)
coffee and babies (uncollected)
colored birds, the (Mockingbird Wish Me Luck)
come on in! (Come On In!)
commerce (sifting through the madness…)