trying to collect rents and
emptying the trash,
and I stood there and watched them put the needle in him,
his eyes were wide open and one of them slid his eyes
shut, and then the needle began to take hold,
he had died stiff upright in the chair
and he began to loosen up
and they found a couple of letters from his sister
in another city, threw him on the stretcher and took him
down the stairs. the sheets were still kinda clean
so I just made the bed over again, cleaned out the dresser,
and when I walked out, all the winos were in the hall
in their pants and dirty undershirts, needing shaves and something to
drink, and I told them: “all right, all you monkeys
clear the god damned halls! you hurt my eyesight!”
“a man died, sir. he was our friend,” one of them said.
it was Benny the Dip. “all right, Benny,” I told him,
“you’ve got one night left in here to get up the rent!”
you should have seen the rest of them disappear:
death doesn’t matter a damn when you need a place to sleep.
on the fire suicides of the buddhists
“They only burn themselves to reach Paradise.”
—Mme. Nhu
original courage is good,
motivation be damned,
and if you say they are trained
to feel no pain,
are they
guaranteed this?
is it still not possible
to die for somebody else?
you sophisticates
who lay back and
make statements of explanation,
I have seen the red rose burning
and this means more.
a division
I live in an old house where nothing
screams victory
reads history
where nothing
plants flowers
sometimes my clock falls
sometimes my sun is like a tank on fire
I do not ask
your armies
or
your kisses
or
your death
I have my
own
my hands have arms
my arms have shoulders
my shoulders have me
I have me
you have me when you can see me
but I don’t like you
to see me
I do not like you to see that
I have eyes in my head
and can walk
and
I do not want to
answer your questions
I do not want to
amuse you
I do not want you to
amuse me
or sicken me
or talk about
anything
I do not want to
love you
I do not want to
save you
I do not want your arms
I do not want your
shoulders
I have me
you have you
let that
be.
conversation with a lady sipping a straight shot
and Joe he was not much good
even at half past 40, he insensibly
loved whore and horse like the average man,
his age would love what brought up color
out of the stem of a dahlia, but so it goes,
the gods break us in half with more than
lightning, twice married twice divorced,
who can ask for more than bloodshot eyes
and bumblebeebelly, good men are broken
daily in the Korea of useless sunlight;
quitting jobs, getting fired more than rockets,
knowing nothing, absolutely nothing
except maybe the way he wanted his haircut,
bouncing like a 16-year-old kid out of a
bad dream, always late for work
but never late for the first race
or the end stool down at the HAPPY NIGHT.
the saying is, Joe never grew up
but in another way he never grew down either,
trying to puff life into himself through his
cheap cigar and flat jukebox music,
or fat June who didn’t care either,
telling her over and over,
Baby, wait’ll you see what I’ve got!
as if the whole thing were something new
and fat June staring into her all-important beer
shaking it and enjoying it
as she would never enjoy herself again.
and when Joe went, a child went,
but they remember him: the whores, the bartenders,
the bosses, the state unemployment offices,
and the jocks—
the way he used to stand down by the rail
and say as they paraded past:
“Hi, Willie! How’s your mother today?”
or, “Eddie, you oughta get one made of wood,
the way you’re riding lately.”
Joe I saw on that last night and he threw his
glass into the mirror and the bartender
mad as hell chased him with a baseball bat
swinging at his balls and everything else,
driving him out into the street and into the path
of a bull with one horn that didn’t sound,
a new Cad a lot tougher than Joe and a lot more
valuable, and that’s the way the scales balance:
broken mirror, broken Joe.
and when I went in the next night the mirror was
still broken and Helen, fat Helen, was shaking her beer,
and I bought her a shot and I said, “Baby, I’ve got
something to show you, something like you’ve never
seen before.”
and she smiled, but it wasn’t what she was thinking.
the way it will happen inside a can of peaches
to die with your boots on
while writing poetry
is not as glorious
as riding a horse
down Broadway
with a stick of dynamite
in your teeth,
but neither is
adding the sum total
of all the planets
named or visible
to man,
and the horse was a gray,
the man’s name was
Sanchez or Kandinsky,
it was 79 degrees
and the children kept
yelling,
hog hog
we are tired
blow us to hell.
scene in a tent outside the cotton fields of Bakersfield:
we fought for 17 days inside that tent
thrusting and counter-thrusting
but finally she got away
and I walked outside
and spit
in the dirty sand.
Abdullah, I said, why don’t you
wash your shorts? you’ve been
wearing the same
shorts
for 17 years.
Effendi, he said, it’s the sun,
the sun cleans everything, what
went with the girl?
I don’t know if I couldn’t
please her
or if I couldn’t
catch her. she was
pretty young.
what did she cost, Effendi?
17 camel.
he whistled through his broken
teeth. aren’t you going
to catch her?
howinthehell how? can I get
my camels back?
you are an American, he said.
I walked into the tent
fell upon the
ground
and held my head
within
my hands.
suddenly she burst within
the tent
laughing madly,
Americano,
Americano!
please
go away
I said quietly.
men are, she said sitting down and rolling down
her stockings, some parts titty and some parts
tiger. you don’t mind
if I roll down
my stockings?
I don’t mind, I said,
if you roll down the top
of your dress. whores are
always rolling down
their hose. please
go away. I read where
the cruiser crew passed the helmet
for the red cross; I think I’ll
have them pass it
to brace your flabby
butt.
have ’em pass the helmet twice, dad,
she said, howcum you don’t love me
no more?
I been thinking, I said,
how can Love have a urinary tract
and distended bowels?
pack up, daughter, and flow,
maneuver out of the mansions
of my sight!
you forget, daddy-o, we’re in
my tent!
oh, christ, I said, the trivialities
of private ownership! where’s my
hat?
you were wearing a towel, dad, but
kiss me, daddy, hold me in your arms!
I walked over and mauled her breasts.
I drink too much beer, she said,
I can’t help it if I
piss.
we fucked for 17 days.
night animal
I have never seen such an animal
except perhaps once,
but that is another story—
there it stood,
no lion
yet no dog
no deer yet deer
frozen nose
and eye, all eye gathering all the
moonlight that hung in trees;
and everywhere the people slept;
I saw bombers over Brazil,
cathedrals choked in silk,
the gray dice of Vegas,
a Van Gogh over the kitchen sink.
home, I poured a drink
took off my gloves you god damned thing
why could you have not been a woman
with all your beauty,
with all your beauty
I have not found her yet.
on the train to Del Mar
I get on the train on the way to the track
it’s down near Dago
and this gives some space and rolling and
I have my pint
and I walk to the barcar for a couple of
beers
and I weave upon the floor—
THACK THACK THACKA THACK THACK THACKA THACK—
and some of it comes back
a little of it comes back
like some green in a leaf after a long
dryness
and the sun crashes into the barcar like a
bull and the bartender sees that
I am feeling good
he smiles a real smile and
asks—
“How’s it going?”
how’s it going? my heels are down
my shoes cracked
I am wearing my father’s pants and he died
10 years ago
I need 8 teeth pulled
my intestine has a partial blockage
I puff on a dime cigar
“Great!” I answer him,
“how you making?”
glory glory glory and the train rolls on
past the sea
past the sand and
down in between the
cliffs.
I thought of ships, of armies, hanging on…
I have practiced death for so long
and still I have not learned it,
and tonight I came in
and my goldfish was not in his bowl,
he had leaped
for reasons of his own
(I had changed the water; it might have been
a fly…)
and he was now on the rug
with black spots upon his golden body,
and he was still and he was stiff
but I put him back in the water
(some sound told me to do this)
and I seemed to see the gills move,
a large air bubble formed
but the body was still stiff
but miraculously
it did not float flat—
the tail part was down in the water,
and I thought of ships, of armies,
hanging on,
and then I saw the small fins
near the underside of the head
move
and tried to read,
tried not to think
that the woman who had given me these fish
was now dead 6 months,
the world going on past living things
now no longer living,
and the other fish had died.
he had overeaten, he had eaten his meal
and most of the meal of the small one,
and now the woman was gone
and the small one was stiff,
and an hour later
when I got up
he floated flat and finished;
his eyes looking up at me did not look at me
but into places I could not see,
and the slave carried the master,
this goldfish with black spots
and dumped him into the toilet
and flushed him away.
I put the bowl in the corner
and thought, I really cannot stand
much more of this.
dead fish, dead ladies, dead wars.
it does seem a miracle to see anybody alive
and now somebody on the radio is playing
a guitar very slowly and I think, yes,
he too: his fingers, his hands, his mind,
and his music goes on but it is very still
it is very quiet, and I am tired.
war and piece
all the efforts of the Spanish to effect peace
were in vain and Domenico came over the hill
and shot the white chicken and raped the woman
in the hut, and then he rode up the road
noticing the pink anemones, the lazy toads,
and when he got to town he ate a hot tamale,
and through the window he saw the fleet
and the fleet put its guns even with the town,
he saw that, and in came a wind of fire,
and in the smoke he grabbed the cigarette girl
and raped her, then he got back on his mule
which stepped carefully over the dead
and he rode back to the village where his own hut
still stood, and the old lady was outside
rubbing clothes on rocks by the stream,
and in the air came the planes
looking them over
banking their wings
and finally deciding
that they were not worth the bombs,
they left
like large undecided butterflies,
and Domenico went inside and fell
upon the floor
and the old lady came in
wiggling what was left,
and he said, war is a horrible thing,
and he wondered if anybody would ever bother to rape her,
he would not stop them, they
could have it, not much there, nothing,
and he decided that sleep was better than nothing
and he went to sl
eep.
18 cars full of men thinking of what could have been
driving in from the track
I saw a woman in green
all rump and breast and dizziness running
across the street.
she was as sexy as a
green and drunken antelope and
when she got to the curbing she
tripped and fell
down and
sat in the gutter and
I sat there in my car
looking at her and
oddly
I felt most impassive as if
nothing had happened and
I sat there looking at this
green creature until
a moving van 60 feet long came
to a stop and
helped the
lady
up.
a young man in white overalls
flushed red and the girl was built
all around all around and
stupid with falling and stupid with life and
swaying on the tower stilts of her
heels
she stood there rubbing her
white knees and
the young man kept talking to
her
he was big dumb blond pink and lonely
but then
the woman asked him
where the nearest bar was and
he grinned and pointed down the street and
gave it