courteous without being prompted,
you even read the classics at an early age,
you were not what we would call selfish or debased,
you were even likeable most of the time,
but now—bang!—
you’re dead, you’re dead, and
you must leave because
there is
no room
left here
for
you
now.
ALONE IN THIS ROOM
I am alone in this room as the world
washes over me.
I sit and wait and wonder.
I have a terrible taste in my mouth
as I sit and wait in this room.
I can no longer see the walls.
everything has changed into something else.
I cannot joke about this,
I cannot explain this as
the world washes over me.
I don’t care if you believe me because
I’ve lost all interest in that too.
I am in a place where I have never been before.
I am alone in a different place that
does not include other faces,
other human beings.
it is happening to me now
in a space within a space as
I sit and wait alone in this room.
FAREWELL, FAREWELL
the blade cuts down and through,
pulls out, enters again, twists.
this is the test so
spit it out, sucker, you’ve long ago
demonstrated your valor
in the face of this unhappy world, in the
face of this
bitterly unhappy world,
and who but a fool would want to
linger?
your little supply of good luck has been
used up so
spit it out, sucker:
the last goodbye is always the
sweetest.
ABOUT THE MAIL LATELY
I keep getting letters, more and more of
them wondering if I am really dead, they have
heard that I am dead.
well, I suppose that it’s my age and all
the drinking that I have done, still
do.
I should be dead.
I will be dead.
and I have never been too interested in
living, it has been hard work, slave
labor, still is.
I’ve been doing some thinking about
death of late and have come up with
one disturbing thought:
that death could be hard work too,
that maybe it’s another kind of trap.
it probably is.
meanwhile, like everybody else,
I do the things I do and I wait around.
I could use this poem as a reply letter
and mail out copies to those who write
me because they’ve heard that I am dead.
I will sign them to
give them legitimacy so that
the receivers can sell them to
collectors who can then resell them for
an even higher price to each other.
which reminds me that I no longer
receive letters from young ladies who
include nude photos and tell me that
they would love to come around and do
housework and lick my stamps.
they probably hope that I can’t get it up
any more.
in any event,
I’ll just continue to answer the death letters,
have another drink, smoke these
Jamaican cigars and hustle for my
rightful place in Classic American Literature
before I
stiffen up
kick the bucket
swallow the 8 ball
send up my last rocket
hustle into the dark
get the hell out
hang it up
and say my last goodbye while
clutching my
last uncashed
ticket.
LIFE ON THE HALF SHELL
the obvious is going to kill us,
the obvious is killing us.
our luck is used up.
as always, we regroup
and wait.
we haven’t forgotten how to
fight
but the long battle has made us
weary.
the obvious is going to kill us,
we are engulfed by the
obvious.
we allowed it.
we deserve it.
a hand moves in the
sky.
a freight train passes in the night.
the fences are broken.
the heart sits alone.
the obvious is going to kill us.
we wait, dreamless.
THE HARDEST
birthday for me was my 30th.
I didn’t want anybody to know.
I’d been sitting in the same bar
night and day
to be
able to keep up this
bluff?
when am I going to give it up and
start acting like everybody
else?
I ordered another drink and
thought about it
and then the answer came to
me:
when you’re dead, baby, when
you’re dead like the rest of
them.
A TERRIBLE NEED
some people simply need to
be unhappy, they’ll scrounge it out
of any given situation
taking every opportunity
to point out
every simple error
or oversight
and then become
hateful
dissatisfied
vengeful.
don’t they realize that
there’s so little
time
for each of us
in this strange
life to make things
whole?
and to squander
our lives living
like that
is nearly
unforgiveable?
and that
there’s never
ever
any way
then
to recover
all that which will be
thus lost
forever?
BODY SLAM
Andre the Giant dead in his Paris
hotel room.
7 feet and 550 pounds, dead.
he used to wrestle.
he was a champion.
a week earlier he had attended
his father’s funeral.
Andre had been a kind soul who
liked to send flowers to people.
but dead he was a problem.
they had to carry him out of
there
and no casket would hold him.
now maybe he’d get some
flowers?
Andre the Giant
in Paris
wrestling with the Angel of
Death.
and the fix wasn’t in,
this
time.
THE GODS ARE GOOD
the poems keep getting better and
better
and I keep winning at the race
track
and even when the bad moments
arrive
I handle them
better.
it’s as if there was a rocket
inside of me
getting ready to shoot out of
the top of my
head
and when it does
what’s left behind I
w
on’t regret.
THE SOUND OF TYPEWRITERS
we were both starving writers, Hatcher and I;
he lived on the 2nd floor of the apartment
house, right below me, and a young lady,
Cissy, she lived on the first floor. she had just
a fair mind but a great body and flowing blond hair and
if you could ignore her unkind city face
she was most of anyone’s good dream; anyhow,
I suppose the sound of the typewriters
ignited her curiosity or stirred
something in her—she knocked at my door one
day, we shared some wine and then she nodded
at the bed and that was that.
she knocked at my door, sporadically, after
that
but then sometimes I heard her knocking on
Hatcher’s door
and as I listened from above to their voices, the laughter,
I had trouble typing, especially after it
became silent down there.
to keep myself typing, as if I was unconcerned,
I copied items from the daily
newspaper.
Hatcher and I used to discuss Cissy.
“you in love with her?” he’d ask.
“fuck no! how about you?”
“no way!” he’d answer. “look, if you’re
in love with her, I’ll tell her not to
come around my place
anymore.”
“hey, baby, I’ll do the same for you,”
I said.
“forget it,” he’d respond.
I don’t know who got the most visits, I
think it was just about
even
but we each realized after a while
that Cissy liked to knock
while the typewriter was working
so both Hatcher and I did a great deal of extra
typing.
Hatcher got lucky with his writing first
so he moved out of that dive and
Cissy went with him; they moved
into his new apartment
together.
after that I began getting phone calls
from Hatcher:
“Jesus, that whore has no class! she’s never
home!”
“are you in love with her?”
“hell no, man, you think I’d get hooked
on trash like her?”
Cissy would be listening on the extension
and then she’d give Hatcher an explicit verbal
retort.
after a while Cissy moved out of Hatcher’s
place;
she still came around to see me occasionally
but she was always with some different
guy, all of them
real low-life
subnormals.
I couldn’t understand the why of those visits;
but no matter—I had somehow lost all
interest.
then I too got a little lucky and
was able to move from the
slums; I left the ex-landlord my
new phone number
in case of
emergency.
some time went by, then the ex-landlord
phoned: “there’s a woman been coming
by. her name is
Cissy.
she wants your new phone number and
address, she’s very
insistent.
should I give it to
her?”
“no, please don’t.”
“man, she’s a number! you mind if I
date her?”
“not at all, help
yourself.”
it’s strange how things like that
are good and interesting
for a while
and it’s o.k. when they end and
you can simply walk
away.
but the good parts were
great and I’ll
also always remember Cissy downstairs
there at Hatcher’s
and me up there madly
typing
weather reports,
political columns
and
obituaries—
I wore out many a good ribbon and
worried myself
stupid, so
Cissy was memorable after
all
and that can’t be said
about just
anybody, you
know?
or
don’t
you
know?
A FIGHT
pretty boy was tiring
his punches were wild
his arms were weary
and the old wino closed in and
it became ugly,
pretty boy dropped to his knees
and the wino had him by the
throat
banging his head against the brick
wall,
pretty boy fell over
as the wino paused
landed a swift kick
to the gential area
then turned and walked back up
the dark alley
to where we stood watching.
we parted to let him
through
and he walked past us
turned
looked back
lit a cigarette
and then moved on.
when I got back in
she was raging:
“where the hell have you been?”
pink-eyed she was
sitting up against the pillows
just her slippers on.
“stop for a quickie?
no wonder you haven’t looked
at me for a week!”
“I saw a good fight. free.
better than anything at the
Olympic. I saw a good ass-
kicking alley fight.”
“you expect me to believe
that?”
“christ, don’t you ever wash
the glasses? well, we’ll use
these two.”
I poured two. she knocked hers
off. well, she needed it
and I needed mine.
“it was really brutal. I hate
to see such things but I can’t
help watching.”
“pour me another drink.”
I poured two more, she needed
hers because she lived with me.
I needed mine because I worked
as a stockroom boy
for the May Co.
“you stopped for a quickie!”
“no, I watched a fight.”
she tossed off her second drink.
she was trying to decide
whether I had had a quickie or
whether I had watched a fight.
“pour us another drink, is that
the only bottle we’ve got?”
I winked at her and pulled
another bottle from a paper sack.
we seldom ate. we drank
and I worked as a
stockroom boy for the May Co. and
she had a pair of the
most beautiful legs I had
ever seen.
as I poured the third drink
she got up, smiled, kicked off the
slippers and put her high heels
on.
“we need some god-damned
ice,” she said as I watched
her ass wobble into the
kitchen.
then she vanished in there
and I thought about that
fight again.
SUNBEAM
sometimes when you are in hell
and it is continuous
you get a bit giddy
and then when you are tired beyond being
tired
sometimes a crazy feeling gets a hold of
you.
the factory was in east L.A.
and of the 150 workers
I was one of only two white men
there.
the other had a soft job.
mine was to wrap and tape
the light fixtures
as they came off the assembly line and
as I tried
to keep pace the
sharp edges of the tape
cut through my gloves and into my
hands.
finally
the gloves had to be thrown
away
because
they were cut to shreds
and then my hands were completely exposed
each new slice like an electric
shock.
I was the big dumb white boy
and as the others
worked to keep pace
all eyes were watching to see
if I would
fall behind.
I gave up on my hands
but I didn’t give up.
the pace seemed impossible
and then something snapped in my
brain and I screamed
out the name of the firm we were all slaving
for, “SUNBEAM!”
at once
everybody laughed
all the girls on the assembly line and
all the guys too although
we all still had to struggle to keep up with
the work flow.
then I yelled it
again:
“SUNBEAM!”
it was a total release for me.
then one of the girls on the
assembly line yelled back,
“SUNBEAM!”
and we all
laughed
together.
and then as we continued
to work
a new voice
would suddenly call out from
somewhere,
“SUNBEAM!”
and each time we
laughed until
we were all drunk with
laughter.
then the foreman,
Morry,
came in from the other
room.
“WHAT THE HELL’S GOING ON IN
HERE? THAT SCREAMING HAS GOT
TO STOP!”
so then, we stopped.
and as Morry turned away we saw that the
seat of his pants was jammed up in the crack of
his ass, that fool in control of
our universe!
I lasted about 4 months there
and I will always remember that day,
that joy, the madness, the mutual
magic of our
many voices
one at a time
screaming
“SUNBEAM!”
sometimes when you are in
a living hell
long enough
things like that sometimes happen
and then
you’re in a kind of heaven
a heaven which might not seem to be
very much at all
to most folks