assholes! you should have burned the whole town
down! I’m sick of it!”
“you just don’t understand
the poems…”
“I do, they are rhymers, full of
platitudes. you write bad
poetry.”
“look muthafucka, I been on the radio, I been printed in the L.A.
Times!”
“oh?”
“well, that happened to
you?”
“no.”
“o.k., muthafucka, you ain’t seen the last of
me!”
I suppose I haven’t. and it’s useless to tell you that I am not
anti-black
because
somehow
that’s when the whole subject becomes
sickening.
millionaires
you
no faces
no faces
at all
laughing at nothing—
let me tell you
I have drunk in skidrow rooms with
imbecile winos
whose cause was better
whose eyes still held some light
whose voices retained some sensibility,
and when the morning came
we were sick but not ill,
poor but not deluded,
and we stretched in our beds and rose
in the late afternoons
like millionaires.
poetry
the bus driver grins while sweating in the heat
of the plateglass windshield,
he doesn’t have a chance—
only Hollywood Boulevard, an impossible sun
and an impossible timetable,
there are so many without a chance.
I realize that there is very little chance
for any of
us. poetry won’t save us or a job won’t save us,
a good job or a bad
job.
we take a little bit and hang onto that until it is
gone.
gongs ring, dances begin, there are holidays and
celebrations…
we try to cheat the bad dream…
poetry, you whore, who will go to any man and then
leave him…
the bus driver has Hollywood Boulevard
I sit next to a fat lady who lays her dead thigh
against me.
there is a tiny roll of sweat behind one of the bus driver’s
ears. he is ashamed to brush it
away.
the people look ahead or read or look out their
windows.
the tiny roll of sweat begins to roll
it rolls along behind the ear
then down the neck,
then it’s
gone.
Vine street, says the bus driver,
this is Vine
street.
he’s right, at last. what a marvelous thing.
I get off at Vine Street. I need a drink or something
to eat. I don’t care about the bus
anymore. it is a
rejected poem. I don’t need it
anymore.
there will be more busses.
I decide upon something to eat
with a drink as
openers.
I walk out of the dark and into the dark
and sit down and
wait.
the painter
he came up on the porch
with a grinning subnormal type
and they stood there
drunk on wine.
the painter had his coat wrapped around something,
then pulled the coat away—
it was a policeman’s helmet
complete with badge.
“gimme 20 bucks for this,” he said.
“fuck off, man,” I said, “what do I want with a
cop’s derby?”
“ten bucks,” he said.
“did you kill him?”
“5 bucks…”
“what happened to that 6 grand you made
at your art show last month?”
“I drank it. all in the same bar.”
“and I never got a beer,” I said.
“2 bucks…”
“did you kill him?”
“we ganged him, punched him around a bit…”
“that’s chickenshit. I don’t want the headpiece.”
“we’re 18 cents short of a bottle, man…”
I gave the painter 35 cents
keeping the chain on the door, slipping it to him
with my fingers. he lived with his mother,
beat his girlfriend regularly
well. but I suppose a lot of obnoxious characters
work their way into
immortality.
I’m working on it myself.
the inquisitor
in the bathtub rereading Céline’s
Journey to the End of the Night
the phone rings
and I get out
grab a towel.
some guy from SMART SET,
he wants to know what’s in my mailbox
how my life has been
going.
I tell him there isn’t anything in the
mailbox or the
life.
he thinks that I’m holding
back. I hope that
I am.
my friend william
my friend William is a fortunate man:
he lacks the imagination to suffer
he kept his first job
his first wife
can drive a car 50,000 miles
without a brake job
he dances like a swan
and has the prettiest blankest eyes
this side of El Paso
his garden is a paradise
the heels of his shoes are always level
and his handshake is firm
people love him
when my friend William dies
it will hardly be from madness or cancer
he’ll walk right past the devil
and into heaven
you’ll see him at the party tonight
grinning
over his martini
blissful and delightful
as some guy
fucks his wife in the
bathroom.
300 poems
look, he said, I’ve written
300 poems in 2
months,
and he handed me the
stack and I
thought
oo oo.
a young girl
walked up
and handed him a plate of
corn and meat
in his cottage
by the beach
and the sea rolled in
and I turned the
white
pages.
I’ve been drinking
he said
and writing
and the young girl said
is there anything else
I can get
you?
he was rich and I was poor
and the sea rolled in
and I turned the
white
pages.
what do you think?
he asked?
and I said,
well, some of
these…
but I didn’t
finish.
later I walked
outside. I walked down
the sand to where the sand got
wet and I looked at the water and
the moon
and then I turned around
and I walked up to the
boardwalk and I thought,
oo oo.
lifting weights at 2 a.m.
queers do this
or is it that you’re
afraid to die?
biceps, triceps, forceps,
what are you going to do
with muscles?
well, muscles please the ladies
and keep the bullies
at bay—
so
what?
is it worth it?
is it worth the collected works
of Balzac?
or a 3 week vacation
in Spain?
or, is it another way of
suffering?
if you got paid to do it,
you’d hate it.
if a man got paid to make love,
he’d hate it.
still, one needs the
exercise—
this writing game:
only the brain and soul get
worked-out.
quit your bitching and
do it.
while other people are
sleeping
you’re lifting a mountain
with rivers of poems
running off.
reality
my little famous bleeding elbows
my knotty knees (especially) and
even my balls
hairy and wasted.
these blue evenings of walking past buildings
where Jews pray beautifully about seasons I
know nothing of
and would leave me alone
with the roaches and ants climbing my dying body
in some place
too real to touch.
earthquake
Americans don’t know what tragedy is—
a little 6.5 earthquake can set them to chattering
like monkeys—
a piece of chinaware broken,
the Union Rescue Mission falls down—
6 a.m.
they sit in their cars
they’re all driving around—
where are they going?
a little excitement has broken into their
canned lives
stranger stands next to stranger
chattering gibberish fear
anxious fear
anxious laughter…
my baby, my flowerpots, my ceiling
my bank account
this is just a tickler
a feather
and they can’t bear it…
suppose they bombed the city
as other cities have been bombed
not with an a-bomb
but with ordinary blockbusters
day after day,
every day
as has happened
in other cities of the world?
if the rest of the world could see you today
their laughter would bring the sun to its knees
and even the flowers would leap from the ground
like bulldogs
and chase you away to where you belong
wherever that is,
and who cares where it is
as long as it’s somewhere away from
here.
the good life at o’hare airport
3 hour wait at the airport in
Chicago, surrounded by killers
I found a table alone
and had a scotch and water
when 4 preachers sat down,
and look here, said one of them,
looking at a newspaper,
here’s a guy drunk, ran through a
wall, killed one person, injured 4.
if I was him, said another,
I’d commit suicide.
I ordered a large beer
and sat there reading my own novel.
look here, said the one with the paper,
here’s a guy, no, two guys,
tried to hijack a liquor truck,
they were so dumb they didn’t even know
it was only carrying wine. didn’t even
break the seal. bound the driver
and then stopped for coffee. the driver
leaned on the horn and a cop car came by
and that was it. they went in and got
those 2 guys.
any 2 guys that dumb, said another,
they sure have it coming.
look sweetie, said another to the waitress,
we don’t want anything to drink, we don’t drink,
but we could sure use 4
coffees, and haven’t I seen you someplace before,
hee hee hee?
give me another beer, I told the
waitress. I drink, and I’ve never seen you anyplace
before.
the waitress came back with 4 cups of coffee
and the beer, and I sat there reading my own novel
as the 4 preachers sat there
whirling their spoons around their cups,
clink clink clink
and I thought, this isn’t a bad novel
this isn’t a bad novel
at all, but the next one is going to be
better, and I lifted my old beer and finished it,
and then drank some of the new
one, and clink clink clink
went the spoons against the cups
and one of the preachers coughed
and everybody was unhappy but
me.
the golfers
driving through the park
I notice men and women playing golf
driving in their powered carts
over billiard table lawns,
they are my age
but their bodies are fat
their hair grey
their faces waffle batter,
and I remember being startled by my own face
scarred, and mean as red ants
looking at me from a department store mirror
and the eyes mad mad mad
I drive on and start singing
making up the sound
a war chant
and there is the sun
and the sun says, good, I know you,
and the steering wheel is humorous
and the dashboard laughs,
see, the whole sky knows
I have not lied to anything
even death will have exits
like a dark theatre.
I stop at a stop sign and
as fire burns the trees and the people and the city
I know that there will be a place to go
and a way to go
and nothing need ever be
lost.
II
spider on the wall:
why do you take
so long?
the mockingbird
the mockingbird had been following the cat
all summer
mocking mocking mocking
teasing and cocksure;
the cat crawled under rockers on porches
tail flashing
and said something angry to the mockingbird
which I didn’t understand.
yesterday the cat walked calmly up the driveway
with the mockingbird alive in its mouth,
wings fanned, beautiful wings fanned and flopping,
feathers parted like a woman’s legs,
and the bird was no longer mocking,
it was asking, it was praying
but the cat
striding down through centuries
would not listen.
I saw it crawl under a yellow car
with the bird
to bargain it to another place.
summer was over.
ha ha ha ha ha, ha ha
monkey feet
small and blue
walking toward you
as the back of a building falls off
and an airplane chews the white sky,
doom is like the handle of a pot,
it’s there,
know it,
have ice in your tea,
&
nbsp; marry,
have children, visit your
dentist,
do not scream at night
even if you feel like screaming,
count ten
make love to your wife,
or if your wife isn’t there
if there isn’t anybody there
count 20,
get up and walk to the kitchen
if you have a kitchen
and sit there sweating
at 3 a.m. in the morning
monkey feet
small and blue
walking toward you.
a fine day and the world looks good
someday the lion will
walk in
he’ll grab an arm
just above the elbow
my old arm
my wrinkled dice-shooting arm
and
I’ll scream
in my bedroom
I won’t understand at all
and he’ll be
too strong for me,
and people will walk in—
a wife, a girlfriend, a bastard son,
a stranger from down the street
and a
doctor
and
they will
watch
and the lion won’t bother them
yet,
and then my arm will be
gone
the doctor will put the
stethoscope to my chest
ask me to cough
then
he will turn to the others and
say
there’s a chance
but I think he’s going