up
he got back into the truck and
60 feet full of
furniture and blanket and stove
pulled on down the street
and the green antelope
crossed the street
toward the bar
wobbling and shaking
shaking and wobbling
everything and
we sat transfixed and
watching
until
in the backed-up traffic
behind me
a man of strength
honked
and I put the thing in drive
slowing for the big dip
by the market
that could tear your car in
half
and they all followed me
slowing for the dip
too:
18 cars full of men thinking of
what could have been—
about the one who
got away and
it was about sunset and
heavy traffic and heavy
life.
the screw-game
one of the terrible things is
really
being in bed
night after night
with a woman you no longer
want to screw.
they get old, they don’t look very good
anymore—they even tend to
snore, lose
spirit.
so, in bed, you turn sometimes,
your foot touches hers—
god, awful!—
and the night is out there
beyond the curtains
sealing you together
in the
tomb.
and in the morning you go to the
bathroom, pass in the hall, talk,
say odd things; eggs fry, motors
start.
but sitting across
you have 2 strangers
jamming toast into mouths
burning the sullen head and gut with
coffee.
in 10 million places in America
it is the same—
stale lives propped against each
other
and no place to
go.
you get in the car
and you drive to work
and there are more strangers there, most of them
wives and husbands of somebody
else, and besides the guillotine of work, they
flirt and joke and pinch, sometimes tend to
work off a quick screw somewhere—
they can’t do it at home—
and then
the drive back home
waiting for Christmas or Labor Day or
Sunday or
something.
a night of Mozart
They slit his pockets and shot him in his car,
eighteen hundred dollars split four ways,
and I used to see him at the track
watching the tote
and going the last-flick bullrush toward the window;
he never took a drink
and he never took a woman home with him,
and he never spoke to anyone,
and I never spoke to anyone either
except to order a drink
or if a hustler had good legs and ass
to let her know
over a scotch and water
that later would be o.k.;
what I am getting at is
that this guy was a pro,
it was a business with him,
he didn’t come out to holler and get drunk
and get fucked—
he came out to make it, which is better
than punching another man’s timeclock;
when I saw him bullrushing the $50 window
late in the year
I knew he was making it much better than I;
the board had showed a lot of false flashes,
some nut with a roll was dropping in one or two grand
at the last minute, but this guy was just that,
a nut with money, and we finally had to go through
the routine of finding out what he was betting
and flushing the horse out
before we got our bets down; this made one sweaty
late bullrush…anyhow, the quiet one didn’t
worry about this and always laid his bet a little ahead
of time and walked off; he kept getting better,
his clothes looked better, he looked calmer,
and you could see him off to the side,
after most races, shoving bills into his wallet,
“I’d start him off with a blow-job and then twist
his nuts until he told me how he did it…”
“Would you do that to me, baby?” I asked.
“With your method of play you’re lucky to have
admission,” she said downing a drink that had cost me
85¢. “Do you still have a collection of Mozart?”
I asked her. “What’s that got to do with it?” she asked.
I walked off.
I read about it in the papers next day. Witnesses
said there were 3 of them and a woman at the wheel.
I saw Jeanette at the bar. “Hello, Mozart,” she said.
She looked a little nervous and at the same time she
seemed to feel pretty good. “I’ll take a double
shot right now,” I said. “And after the next race,
I think I’ll have a vodka. I’m going to mix them all day.
Haven’t
been real drunk in a couple of years.”
She watched me lighting a cigarette, then I told her, “Also, I
want a pack of smokes, and you are going home with me tonight and
we are going to listen to Mozart all night. You are going to
like it. You are going to have to like it.”
She paid for the drink. “You’re looking for trouble,” she told
me. “Bitch,” I said, “I have been trying to commit suicide for
years.”
I had a good day. We went home and listened to Mozart for hours.
She was as good as ever on the springs. Only this time there was
no charge. Then she cried half the night and said she loved me.
I knew what that was for.
The next afternoon at the track I didn’t speak to her, and I won
one hundred and twelve dollars, not counting drinks and admission,
and I kept looking back through the rearview window as I drove,
bigtime, and then I began to laugh, shit, they knew I was nothing,
I was safe; I should tell the screws but when a man is dead
the screws can’t bring him back.
I got home and opened a fifth of scotch, tired of Mozart
I tried The Rake’s Progress by Strav.
I read the Racing Form for about 30 minutes, put in a long distance
call to some woman in Sacramento, drank a little more and went to
bed, alone, about 11:30.
sleeping woman
I sit up in bed at night and listen to you
snore
I met you in a bus station
and now I wonder at your back
sick white and stained with
children’s freckles
as the lamp divests the unsolvable
sorrow of the world
upon your sleep.
I cannot see your feet
but I must guess that they are
most charming feet.
who do you belong to?
are you real?
I think of flowers, animals, birds
they all seem more than good
and so clearly
real.
yet you cannot help being a
&
nbsp; woman. we are each selected to be
something. the spider, the cook.
the elephant. it is as if we were each
a painting and hung on some
gallery wall.
—and now the painting turns
upon its back, and over a curving elbow
I can see ½ a mouth, one eye and
almost a nose.
the rest of you is hidden
out of sight
but I know that you are a
contemporary, a modern living
work
perhaps not immortal
but we have
loved.
please continue to
snore.
when you wait for the dawn to crawl through the screen like a burglar to take your life away—
the snake had crawled the hole,
and she said,
tell me about
yourself.
and
I said,
I was beaten down
long ago
in some alley
in another
world.
and she said,
we’re all
like pigs
slapped down some lane,
our
grassbrains
singing
toward the
blade.
by
god,
you’re an
odd one,
I said.
we
sat there
smoking
cigarettes
at
5
in the morning.
poem while looking at an encyclopedia:
it is a page of reptiles, green pink fuchsia
slime motif
sexual organs
lips teeth fangs
bringing down 1917 Spads,
games with toy cars
in a boy’s backyard;
and eggs eggs eggs
of the hognose snake
she circles them in the sun,
life is an electric whip,
and ha!—the copperhead
he looks about, tiny brain
in the air searching
a wiseness as small as
seething to stroke a death;
and the horned toad:
fat little shitter in
fake armour
he blinks blinks
blinks in the sun
watching the flies
he is a tired old man
beyond hardly caring—
he just looks and waits
very dry
(wanting storm)
powerless
(without desire for)
ungifted he
waits to be eaten;
and the gila monster
and the collared lizard,
the box turtle,
the chuckwalla,
here they go along the page,
and through rock and cacti
I suppose they are beautiful
in their slow horror,
and at the bottom
an alligator puts his eye upon me
and we look
he and I; he breathes and hungers
on a flat dream, and so
this is the way we will be spread
across the page,—
teeth, title, poesy,
alligator heart,
as the sky falls down.
3 lovers
I saw them
sitting in the lamplight and
I went in
and
he talked
waving his hands
jesus
his face was red
and
he talked
he wanted to be
right
he waved his hands
but when I left
he just sat there
and
she sat there
in the chair across from him
and
I got into my car
and backed out the drive
and
left them there
to do
whatever
they wanted to
do.
did I ever tell you?
Did I ever tell you
about the damn fool who
liked to make love
in front of a
picture window?
And there was the one
who took the phonograph back,
and the one who
broke the lampshades
and the one with the
little golden hairs on his
chest.
And the one
on the kitchen floor,
and the one who
hunted for the mouth
of the Orinoco River.
And the tall one who
became a forest ranger
and left a note with Roger
confessing he was queer
(but Roger already knew).
Then there’s the communist—he’s in
Canada
or Florida, only I think
he’s somebody else under this other
name, and I have a photo of him
crawling out of a rowboat;
he has lovely gray hair and his face
is sort of blue
and he writes these
long love letters.
And Edward was a queer—but so very gentle;
he lit candles, had a sense of humor and
very hairy legs—like one of those land
crabs
or a coconut.
And Jerry was just like a horse—
if I looked him in the eye
he couldn’t
kiss me.
(He just pretended he was gay
but he wasn’t.)
(I can tell. Oh, I can always tell.)
Then there was my desert
romance—I really don’t like to tell
about it, but since you asked—
I think he really
loved me.
I got drunk and
fell off my horse
and broke my
arm
when we tried to jump a fence
riding double-saddle
and his wife threatened to
kill me
so
I
left town.
I used to go up on the
roof with Manny.
He was strange.
Parents spoiled him.
We looked at the moon through
a telescope: I stood
at the big end
and held it up
and he sat down
at the little end
and looked through it.
And Carl has my Drama
Through the Ages, from
Euripides to Miller.
(I must write him for it. You
won’t mind?) That Carl—
it was my birthday
and I came in
and he was out
cold drunk
on the sofa
and I threw
some flowers at him
(vase and all)
and he stood up
and showed me the tiniest
gold bracelet
in a little felt box,
and I cried.
(Oh yes, I loved him. I really
loved him—he was so kind,
and he was always writing mother—
“Where’s Rita at, please tell me!”
but mother
never told him.)
Then there was that old bastard German
they never know when to give it up.
He was bald and I hated him,
he looked like a sick frog
and his breath was bad,
but the funniest thing
was all
this hair on
his belly. I could never
figure it.
He had plenty of money
but he was married,
the old bastard,
and he told me
he loved me,
and he hired me as a
secretary,
he was always playing around,
the old bastard,
and I finally ran away,
though I could have taken him
from his wife
but I couldn’t stand the old
bastard.
Vincent?
No. He was nothing. He was frightened
of his brother.
“My brother!” he’d scream
and we’d all run out the back door
and into the garage naked
or just in panties and bras.
I made curtains for his house
and he called me daughter
and I cooked for him
and he wrote everything in a little
black book and wore a sailing cap.
He dropped money on the floor
and played the organ…
wrote an opera for Organ
called the Emperor of San Francisco.
But I liked him mainly because
he knew the kids,
drove me to Newman once to meet them,
and once, before he got real tight
he sent me money
when I was stranded in the islands.
And Gus—he was just like a father to me—
I knew him so long.
I met him in the islands
when I was stranded.
I think he saved my life.
I got fired for being caught in the
barracks.
But he understood.
Oh, I know you don’t like him,
but he’s so understanding.
And when Vincent sent the money
we both came stateside.
He said he wanted to marry me
but he had to take care of his
mother
who had some kind of
lifelong disease.
He’s always running back to