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 apple
this is not just an apple
this is an experience
red green yellow
with underlying pits of white
wet with cold water
I bite into it
christ, a white doorway…
another bite
chewing
while thinking of an old witch
choking to death on an apple skin—
a childhood story.
I bite deeply
chew and swallow
there is a feeling of waterfalls
and endlessness
there is a mixture of electricity and
hope.
yet now
halfway through the apple
some depressive feelings begin
it’s ending
I’m working toward the core
afraid of seeds and stems
there’s a funeral march beginning in Venice,
a dark old man has died after a lifetime of pain
I throw away the apple early
as a girl in a white dress walks by my window
followed by a boy half her size
in blue pants and striped
shirt
I leave off a small belch
and stare at a dirty
ashtray.
the violin player
he was in the upper grandstand
at the end
where they made their stretch moves
after coming off the curve.
he was a small man
pink, bald, fat
in his 60’s.
he was playing a violin
he was playing classical music on
his violin
and the horseplayers ignored him.
Banker Agent won the first race
and he played his violin.
Can Fly won the 3rd race and
he continued to play his violin.
I went to get a coffee and when I came back
he was still playing, and he was still playing
after Boomerang won the 4th.
nobody stopped him
nobody asked him what he was doing
nobody applauded.
after Pawee won the 5th
he continued
the music falling over the edge of the
grandstand and into the
wind and sun.
Stars and Stripes won the 6th
and he played some more
and Staunch Hope got up on the inside
to take the 7th
and the violin player worked away
and when Lucky Mike won at 4 to 5 in the 8th
he was still making music.
and they began their long slow walk to their cars
beaten and broke again
the violin player continued
sending his music after them
and I sat there listening
we were both alone up there and
when he finished I applauded.
the violin player stood up
faced me and bowed.
then he put his fiddle in the case
got up and walked down the stairway.
I allowed him a few minutes
and then I got up
and began the long slow walk to my car.
it was getting into evening.
5 dollars
I am dying of sadness and alcohol
he said to me over the bottle
on a soft Thursday afternoon
in an old hotel room by the train depot.
I have, he went on, betrayed myself with
belief, deluded myself with love
tricked myself with sex.
the bottle is damned faithful, he said,
the bottle will not lie.
meat is cut as roses are cut
men die as dogs die
love dies like dogs die,
he said.
listen, Ronny, I said,
lend me 5 dollars.
love needs too much help, he said.
hate takes care of itself.
just 5 dollars, Ronny.
hate contains truth. beauty is a facade.
I’ll pay you back in a week.
stick with the thorn
stick with the bottle
stick with the voices of old men in hotel rooms.
I ain’t had a decent meal, Ronny, for a
couple of days.
stick with the laughter and horror of death.
keep the butterfat out.
get lean, get ready.
something in my gut, Ronny, I’ll be able
to face it.
to die alone and ready and unsurprised,
that’s the trick.
Ronny, listen—
that majestic weeping you hear
will not be for
us.
I suppose not, Ronny.
the lies of centuries, the lies of love,
the lies of Socrates and Blake and Christ
will be your bedmates and tombstones
in a death that will never end.
Ronny, my poems came back from the
New York Quarterly.
that is why they weep,
without knowing.
is that what all that noise is, I said,
my god shit.
cooperation
she means well.
play the piano
she says
it’s not good for you
not to write.
she’s going for a walk
on the island
or a boatride.
I believe she’s taken a modern novel
and her reading glasses.
I sit at the window
with her electric typewriter
and watch young girls’ asses
which are attached to
young girls.
the final decadence.
I have 20 published books
and 6 cans of beer.
the tourists bob up and down in the water
the tourists walk and talk and take
photographs and
drink soft drinks.
it’s not good for me not to
write.
she’s in a boat now, a
sightseeing tour
and
she’s thinking, looking
at the waves—
“it’s 2:30 p.m.
he must be writing
it’s not good for him not to write.
tonight there will be other things to do.
I hope he doesn’t drink
too much beer. he’s a much better
lover than Robert was
and the sea is beautiful.”
the night I was going to die
the night I was going to die
I was sweating on the bed
and I could hear the crickets
and there was a cat fight outside
and I could feel my soul dropping down through the
mattress
and just before it hit the floor I jumped up
I was almost too weak to walk
but I walked around and turned on all the lights
then made it back to the bed
and again my soul dropped down through the mattress
and I leaped up
just before it hit the floor
I walked around and I turned on all the lights
and then I went back to bed
and down it dropped again and
I was up
turning on all the lights
I had a 7 year old daughter
and I felt sure she didn’t want me dead
otherwise it wouldn’t have
mattered
but all that night
nobody phoned
nobody came by with a beer
my girlfriend didn’t phone
all I could hear were the crickets and it was
hot
and I kept working at it
getting up and down
until the first of the sun came through the window
through the bushes
and then I got on the bed
and the soul stayed
inside at last and
I slept.
now people come by
beating on the doors and windows
the phone rings
the phone rings again and again
I get great letters in the mail
hate letters and love letters.
everything is the same again.
2347 Duane
there’s this blue baby and she’s sucking a
blue breast under a green vine that has
grown from the ceiling,
and further to the right
there’s a light brown girl
against a dark brown background
and she’s leaning out over a chair looking
pensive, I suppose.
my cigarette just went out
there are never any matches around here
and I get up and go into the kitchen
and light it on a 30 year old stove.
I get back without accident.
now behind me on a pink chair
is a large old-fashioned shears.
it is 15 minutes past midnight
and the hook is on the door
and over the tall twisted lamp by the bed
is a red floppy hat that is used as a lampshade
and a small dog growls at the tall cold sky outside.
there are two mattresses on the floor
and I have slept on one of those mattresses
many nights.
they say they are going to bulldoze this place
which is owned by a Japanese wrestler called Fuji.
I don’t see how it can be replaced with anything better.
she fixed the bathtub faucet and the faucet in the sink
tonight. she can’t roll a cigarette but she keeps the
plumbing bills down.
we ate some Col. Sanders chicken with coleslaw, mashed spuds,
gravy and biscuits.
it’s 23 minutes past midnight
and they are going to bulldoze this place,
I don’t mean tomorrow, I mean soon,
and the small dog growls at the sky again
and my cigarette is out again;
the love on that one mattress near the door,
the sex and the arguments and the dreams and the
conversations,
that bulldozer is going to come up missing there,
and even when it knocks down the trees and the crapper
and eats holes in the dirt driveway
it’s not going to get it all,
and when I drive by in 6 months and see the highrise
filled with 50 people with good stable incomes,
I will still remember the blue baby sucking the blue breast,
the vine through the roof, the brown girl,
the leaky faucets, the spiders and the termites,
the grey and yellow paint, the tablecloth over the front
window, and that mattress near the door.
a radio with guts
it was on the 2nd floor on Coronado Street
I used to get drunk
and throw the radio through the window
while it was playing, and, of course,
it would break the glass in the window
and the radio would sit out there on the roof
still playing
and I’d tell my woman,
“Ah, what a marvelous radio!”
the next morning I’d take the window
off the hinges
and carry it down the street
to the glass man
who would put in another pane.
I kept throwing that radio through the window
each time I got drunk
and it would sit out there on the roof
still playing—
a magic radio
a radio with guts,
and each morning I’d take the window
back to the glass man.
I don’t remember how it ended exactly
though I do remember
we finally moved out.
there was a woman downstairs who worked in
the garden in her bathing suit
and her husband complained he couldn’t sleep nights
because of me
so we moved out
and in the next place
I either forgot to throw the radio out the window
or I didn’t feel like it
anymore.
I do remember missing the woman who worked in the
garden in her bathing suit,
she really dug with that trowel
and she put her behind up in the air
and I used to sit in the window
and watch the sun shine all over that thing
while the music played.
Solid State Marty
he’s almost 80 and they went to
visit him the other
day. he was sitting in his chair
with a burlap rug over his
lap
and when they walked in
the first thing he said was
“Don’t touch my cock!”
he had a gallon jug of
zinfandel in his
refrigerator, had just gotten off
of
5 days of
tequila.
a new $600 piano was in the center of
the room,
he’d bought it for his
son.
he’s always phoning for me to come over
but when I do
he’s very dull. he agrees with
everything I say and
then he goes to
sleep.
Solid State Marty.
when I’m not there
he does everything:
sets fire to the couch
pisses on his belly
sings the National Anthem.
he gets call girls over and
squirts them with
seltzer water, he
rips the telephone wire out
of the wall
but bef
ore he does
he telephones
Paris
Madrid
Tokyo
he beats dogs
cats
people
with his
silver crutch
he tells stories about
how he was a
matador
a boxer
a pimp
a friend of Ernie’s
a friend of Picasso
but when I come over
he goes to sleep
upright in his chair
grey hair rumbling down over
the silent
dumb hawk face
his son starts talking
and then it’s time
for me
to go.
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