those islands,
so completely lost,
utterly lost.
You’d hardly know him now.
He’s stopped drinking
and weighs 297,
(and he kissed just like you,
and had little wires in his left
leg, but he’d never tell me…)
…and the chauffeur
walked into the room
with a basket
with a live chicken
in it. This guy grabbed the chicken
around the neck
and whirled it
around and around
and you should have heard
that chicken scream
and then he cut it with a knife
and the blood
flew like rain
and this guy
played his piccolo
and watched my eyes,
and that’s all that happened,
even though he had made me
take off my dress.
He gave me $25
but somehow
the whole thing
made me sick.
Nicholas was a queer
and impotent,
and he was my lover.
He still has my
e.e. cummings.
The first one was insane.
He blew
through fig leaves
while sitting on the coffee table
his hands tangled in my hair.
He played the oboe
and you know what
they say about the oboe:
they took him away
from me
and he was like a child.
I gave the oboe to a ballet dancer
who broke his
leg on
a camp stool
while
hiking
in the Adirondacks.
I was engaged to Arlington
only three weeks.
And he tore the ring from my finger
claiming he didn’t
want to marry the whole
queer army.
Later he cried on my shoulder
and told me he was a queen bee
and a general
and that he had been kidding himself
all his life.
I cried when he left.
Ralph was the only one, I think,
who ever loved me,
but he didn’t appreciate the finer
things:
he thought that Van Gogh used to pitch for
Brooklyn and that George Sand played
opposite Zsa Zsa Gabor.
And when he sent money from East Lansing
I bought a hi-fi set and a toy bull
with blue eyes
and called him Keithy-pot.
I sent Ralph a pressed azalea and a photo
of me
bending over
in a bikini.
Sherman was afraid of the dark.
He died swallowing a
cherry seed. Roger—I’ve told
you
about him; Roger started
a good story once
but he never finished it.
It was about a queer
sitting at a table
at a night club
and these people came up—
but, oh, I can’t explain it.
Peter will kill himself some day.
Art will kill himself.
Tommy set fire to the bed and
beat his mother. I only
lived with him
because of her. We went
to Alkaseltzer Mass
together. Once he
hit her when she
got off the streetcar.
Then he hit me. I hated him,
but she was like a mother to me.
And then I met you.
Remember that Sunday at
the Round Duck?
You said,
let’s go to
Mexico.
And you took me up
to your place
and read Erie Stanley Gardner
and then you hung out
the window.
You looked like my father.
You should have known my father.
He was a drunkard.
Oh, I’m so glad I met you.
You make me
feel so
good. Darling you are a
man.
The only real
MAN
I’ve ever known!
Oh dear, how I’ve
waited!
My hands are cold and
you have the funniest
feet!
I love you…
song of my typewriter:
the best way to think is not at all—
my banjo screams in the brush
like a trapped rabbit (do rabbits
scream? never mind: this is an
alcoholic dream);
machine guns, I say,
the altarboys,
the wet nurses,
the fat newsboys,
rubber-lipped delegates
of the precious life;
my banjo screams
sing
sing through the darkened dream,
green grow green,
take gut:
death, at last,
is no headache.
and the moon and the stars and the world:
long walks at
night—
that’s what’s good
for the
soul:
peeking into windows
watching tired
housewives
trying to fight
off
their beer-maddened
husbands.
the sharks
the sharks knock on my door
and enter and ask favors;
how they puff in my chairs
looking about the room,
and they ask for deeds:
light, air, money,
anything they can get—
beer, cigarettes, half dollars, dollars,
fives, dimes,
all this as if my survival were assured,
as if my time were nothing
and their presence valuable.
well, we all have our sharks, I’m sure,
and there’s only one way to get them off
before they hack and nibble you to death—
stop feeding them; they will find
other bait; you fattened them
the last dozen times around—
now set them out
to sea.
fag, fag, fag
he wrote,
you are a humorless ass,
I was only pulling your leg about D.
joining the Foreign Legion, and
D. is about as much fag as
Winston Churchill.
hmm, I thought, I am in contact with the
greatest minds of my
generation. clever! Winnie is dead so he
can’t be a
fag.
the letter continued,
you guys in California are fag-happy,
all you do is sit around and think about
fags. just the same I will send you the anti-war
materials I and others wrote, although I
doubt it will stop the
war.
10 years ago he had sent me a photo of
D. and himself at a picnic ground.
D. was dressed in a Foreign Legion uniform,
there was a bottle of wine,
and a table with one tableleg
crooked.
I thought it over for 10 years and then
answered:
I have nothing against 2 men sleeping together
so long as I am not one of those 2
men.
I didn’t infer which one was
the
fag.
anyway, today I got the anti-war materials
in the mail, but he’s right:
it won’t stop the war or anything
else.
Ivan the Terrible
found it difficult
either to stand or
to bend over
was fat with
big eyes and
low
forehead
had a perennial
smile
due to an
underslung
jaw
killed his eldest son
with blows
in a moment
of anger
appeared to be uncomfortable
after the age
of
40
excelled in progress
and
butchery
died in 1584
at the age of
54, weighing
209
pounds
last summer
they removed his
skeleton
from the Arkhangelsk Church
in the Kremlin
to make a
lifelike
bust
now
he’s almost done
and looks like
a 20th century
bus driver
the bones of my uncle
(for J.B. who never read the stuff)
the bones of my uncle
rode a motorcycle in Arcadia
and raped a housewife
within a garage
hung with rakes and hoses
the bones of my Uncle
left behind
1: a jar of peanut butter
and
2: two girls named
Katherine &
Betsy and
3: a ragged wife who cried
continually.
the bones of my Uncle
played horses
too
and
made counterfeit money—
mostly dimes, and the F.B.I. wanted him for
something more serious
although what it was
I have since
forgotten.
the bones of my Uncle
stretched the long way
seemed too short
and looked at
coming toward you
bent like bows
beneath the knees.
the bones of my Uncle
smoked and cussed
and they were buried
where bones are buried
who have no
money.
I almost forgot to tell you:
his bones were named “John”
and
had green eyes
which did not
last.
a last shot on two good horses
it was about 10 years ago at Hollywood Park—
I had a shackjob, 2 cars, a house, a dog as big as Nero drunk,
and I was making it with the horses, or I thought I was,
but going into the 7th race I was down to my last $50
and I put the $50 on Determine and then I wanted a cup of coffee
but I only had a dime left and coffee was then 15¢.
I went into the crapper and I wanted to flush myself away,
they had me, all I had left was that piece of paper in my wallet,
and I would have been willing to sell that back for $40
but I was ashamed. well, I went out and watched the race
and Determine won.
I collected and set aside a ten and put the remainder all on
My Boy Bobby. My Boy Bobby made it. I collected and stood over in
a corner, separating the 50s and the 20s and tens and fives,
and then I drove on in, I gave her the thumb up as I drove up the drive,
and when I got inside I threw all the money up into the air.
She was a beautiful whore and her eyes almost came out when she saw
that, and the dog ran in and snatched a ten and ran into the kitchen,
and I was pouring drinks and she said, “hey, the hound got a tenner!”
and I said, “hell, let him have it!” we drank ’em down.
then I said, “umm, I think I’ll get that ten anyhow,” and I walked in
and took it from him, it was only chewed a little, and that night
on the bed she showed me all the tricks in wonderland, and later
it rained and we listened to Carmen and drank and laughed all night long.
days and nights like that just don’t happen too often.
III
& the great white horses come up
& lick the frost of the dream
no grounding in the classics
I haven’t slept
for 3 nights
or 3 days
and my eyes are more
red than white;
I laugh in the
mirror,
and I have been
listening to the clock
tick
and the gas
of my heater
a hot thick
heavy
smell, run
through with the sounds
of cars,
cars strung up
like ornaments
in my head, but
I have read
the classics
and on my couch
sleeps a wine-soaked
whore
who for the first
time
has heard
Beethoven’s 9th,
and bored,
has fallen asleep,
politely
listening.
just think, daddy, she said,
with your brains
you might be the first man
to copulate
on the moon.
drawing of a band concert on a matchbox
life on paper is so much more
pleasurable:
there are no bombs or flies or
landlords or starving
cats,
and I am in the kitchen
staring down at the blue lake of the
concertmaster
and also the trees
rowboats, boy with American flag
lady in yellow with fan
Civil War veteran
girl with balloon
spotted dog
sailboat,
the peace of an ancient day
with the sun dreaming old
battles—
John L. Sullivan emptying the pint
in his dressing room
and getting ready to whip the world like a
bad child—
far from our modern life
where a doctor sticks something in your side,
saying, “is something making you nervous? something is
killing you.”
I open the matchbox, take out a beautiful wooden match
and light a cigar.
I look out the window. it is raining, there will be nothing
in the park today except bums and madmen.
I blow the smoke against the wet glass and wonder what I am doing
inside here
dry and dying and
I hear the rain as a toilet flushes through the wall
(a living neighbor)
and the flowers open their arms for love.
I sit down next to the lady in yellow with the fan and
she smiles at me
and we talk we talk
only I can’t hear for all the music
“your name? your name?” I keep asking
but she only smiles at me
and the dog is howling.
but yellow is my favorite color
(Van Gogh liked it too)
yellow
and I d
o not blow smoke in her face
and I am there
I am actually down there in the matchbox
and I am here too.
she smiles
and I lay her right on the
stove
and it is
hot
hot
the American flag waves in
battle—
play your music concertmaster
in your red coat
with your hot July buttocks.
the balloon pops and I walk across a kitchen
on a rainy day in February
to check on eggs and bread and
wine and sanity
to check on glue
to paste nice pictures
on these walls.
bad night
I am fairly drunk and there is a man jumping
up and down on the floor in his shack next door
he’s rough on the floorboards and I listen to his
dance while my wife is in the can and Fidelio is on
our radio, and today at the track I lost $70 and a woman
got her foot caught in the escalator, and the drunks
hollered at the usher: REVERSE IT! THROW IT IN
REVERSE! meanwhile, the red blood and the gamblers
and
myself watching the tote for a meaningful flash and I
dumped it in
the wrong place.
now the man has stopped jumping on the floor and
has opened his bible. well, it has been a bad
summer for all of us. a particular feeling
a flailing feeling of too much. we are shocked
almost senseless with the demand to put on our
socks, we hang like paintings of blue-skinned