each waiting their
turn.
she’s gone…
somewhere.
the remainder of the program loses
some meaning,
except a very sexy young
chicano teacher
in a yellow dress
comes out and sings
“Silent Night”
in Spanish.
meanwhile Mr. Doerflinger is seen running about,
in this door, out that
one, showing his buttocks,
racing across the stage in some
great
urgency…
“Doerflinger,” says somebody.
he will not be forgotten by
anybody. he will not allow himself to be,
especially by the ladies.
it goes on.
“Let There Be Peace On Earth”
we all sing together. the last number on the
program.
taxpayers forget Christmas, remember instead how nice your
children are.
we get back to the mother’s apartment
and there is a notice that they will shut off
the gas that
day. the mother claims no previous
notice has been
received.
I drive them down to 5th street
in Santa Monica
to the gas co.
I wave
goodbye. they stand on the corner.
my daughter has a hole
in her black
tights,
right
knee…
“Let there be peace on earth
And let it begin with me.
Let there be peace on earth,
The peace that was meant to be.
With God as our Father,
Brothers all are we—
Let me walk with my brother
In perfect harmony.”
marina:
majestic, magic
infinite
my little girl is
sun
on the carpet—
out the door
picking a
flower, ha!,
an old man,
battle-wrecked,
emerges from his
chair
and she looks at me
but only sees
love,
ha!, and I become
quick with the world
and love right back
just like I was meant
to do.
one with dante
I have lost it in Paradise Valley
with 4 women sitting in a kitchen
talking and laughing about men and love and life and
sex,
I have lost it in Paradise Valley
I have lost the word and the way and the light,
4 women sitting in the kitchen
drinking gallons of
coffee, and now
I sit in front of a window
looking at the desert,
one with Dante,
I wonder what the Paradise Valley ladies want.
these 3 sisters and a friend.
through this small window,
I see children dogs cattle horses flies sand
chickens ducks,
I hear the names of men now from the kitchen
and the girls laugh, and
I wonder, what am I
doing here?
these girls…this continual examination of the senses
and the ideas and the reasons and the facts and the
moods
destroys, destroys…
I have lost it in Paradise Valley.
you have to lose it somewhere:
I chose Arizona; although the love
last night was
good, I am lost in the desert
I have given it up.
an interesting night
my girlfriend
she started smashing
all my bottles
my whiskey bottle and my
beer bottles,
meanwhile
yelling and screaming,
then she ran
out the door.
3 police arrived 5 minutes
later,
one holding shotgun,
and they asked
various questions,
one of them being:
what do you
do?
I’m a writer,
I said.
the cop smirked at
me, walked over to the
typewriter,
picked up some papers
and started
reading.
it was my 2,000 word essay
on the meaning of
suicide.
he didn’t seem much
interested.
after they left
I went all the way to
Altadena
and slept with a fine
22 year old girl
some pot
3 cats
3 homosexuals
a 7 year old boy
a dog, and
a 24 by 20 photo
of me
hanging over the fireplace,
looking
wise.
a threat to my immortality
she undressed in front of me
keeping her pussy to the front
while I layed in bed with a bottle of
beer.
where’d you get that wart on
your ass? I asked.
that’s no wart, she said,
that’s a mole, a kind of
birthmark.
that thing scares me, I said,
let’s call
it off.
I got out of bed and
walked into the other room and
sat on the rocker
and rocked.
she walked out. now, listen, you
old fart. you’ve got warts and scars and
all kinds of things all over
you. I do believe you’re the ugliest
old man
I’ve ever seen.
forget that, I said, tell me some more
about that
mole on your butt.
she walked into the other room
and got dressed and then ran past me
slammed the door
and was
gone.
and to think,
she’d read all my books of
poetry too.
I just hoped she wouldn’t tell
anybody that
I wasn’t pretty.
climax
I was somewhere…somewhere in Europe
act II, scene II
Siegfried…
the whole building shook
there was flame
world ending,
bodies hurled through air
like mad
clowns…
the orchestra quit
playing.
“It’s the BOMB! THE
BOMB!” somebody
screamed. the bomb the bomb the bomb
the bomb.
I grabbed a fat blonde
tore her dress away,
gotterdammerung!
“I don’t want to
die!” said the
blonde. the whole opera house was
coming down. blood on the
floor. more flame.
smoke. smoke. screaming. it was
terrible. I stuck it
in.
a man’s woman
the dream of a man
is a whore with a gold tooth
and a garter belt,
perfumed
with false eyebrows
mascara
earrings
salami breath
high heels
long stockings with a ve
ry slight
run on back of left stocking,
a little bit fat,
a little bit drunk,
a little bit silly and a little bit crazy
who doesn’t tell dirty jokes
and has 3 warts on her back
and pretends to enjoy symphony music
and who will stay a week
just one week
and wash the dishes and cook and fuck and suck
and scrub the kitchen floor
and not show any photos of her children
or talk about her x-husband or husband
or where she went to school or where she was born
or why she went to jail last time
or who she’s in love with,
just stay one week
just one week
and do the thing and go and never come
back
for that one earring on the dresser.
tight pink dress
I read where this 44 year old soprano of some fame
fell out of a 4 story window
and killed herself, well, I suppose this is all right
for sopranos of some fame, but
I think that 8 stories is more
reasonable.
I know this woman, a sister of the mother of my
child, some years back
her husband divorced her
and she jumped out of a 4 story window
and broke both legs
and other assorted parts.
maybe that soprano just wasn’t as tough as she was;
well, Helen got over the broken leg and parts,
and she came around one day to my place in a nice tight
pink dress, and we were alone but
nothing happened, I didn’t want it to,
and we talked
and now she is really married to something,
one of the most obnoxious souls
that I know…
“he plays the flute,” says the mother of my child,
“they get along…”
he came to see me one time and I ran him out the door:
he packed death around with him like breath chasers.
I’ve advised her to go 12 stories high
when this one fails…
I should have taken her the day she arrived in her
tight pink dress…
this guy and his flute…
he probably shits flutes…
and Helen with all that money, you think she might have
done better.
more or less, for julie:
on the Hammond or through the bomb-shadowed window,
through steak turned blue with the rot of drunken days,
through signature and saliva
through Savannah,
dark running streets like veins
caught in a juniper brush, through love spilled
behind a broken shade on an October day;
through forms and windows and lines,
through a book by Kafka stained with wine,
through wives and friends and jails,
standing young once
hearing Beethoven or Bruckner,
or even riding a bicycle,
young as that,
impossible,
coming across the bridge
in Philadelphia
and meeting your first whore,
falling on the ice, drunk and numbed,
you picking up she, she picking up he,
until at last, laughing across all barriers,
no marriage was ever more innocent or blessed,
and I remember her name and yes her eyes,
and a small mole on her left shoulder,
and so we go down, down in sadness, sadness,
sitting in a grease-stained room
listening to the corn boil.
this is the way it goes and goes and goes
“All your writing about pain and suffering is a bunch of bullshit.”—
just because I told you that rock music
hurts my head
just because we have slept and awakened and
eaten together
just because we’ve been in cars and at racetracks
together
in parks in bathtubs in rooms
together
just because we’ve seen the same swan and the same
dog at the same time
just because we’ve seen the same wind blow the same
curtain
you have suddenly become a literary critic
just because you have sculpted my head
and read my books
and told me of your loves and your flirtations and
your travels
just because I know the name of your daughter
and have changed a flat tire for you
you have suddenly become a literary critic
just because you’ve had 3 poems accepted by a mimeo mag
just because you’re writing a novel about your own madness
you have suddenly become a literary critic
just because I have fucked you 144 times
you have suddenly become a literary critic
well, then, tell me,
of all these writers…who’s pain is real?
what? yes, I might have
guessed—your pain is
real. so, in the best interest of us all
wave goodbye to the living who have lost the strength
to weep, and
as white ladies in pink rooms put on
blue and green earrings,
wave goodbye to me.
left with the dog
men in white t-shirts (unbothered
by life) are walking their
dogs
outside
as I watch a professional basketball
game on
t.v. and
I have no interest
in who will win but I do notice
a lady in the grandstand crossing
her legs (my editor phoned me last night at 10:15 p.m. and
found me asleep—
maybe that’s why he has to
print the unpublished works of
Gertrude Stein).
very bad
symphony music now
(I mean bad for me)
the violin sings of dank life and the
grave and I am a student of
both.
here now
my love has gone looking
for an apartment in Venice,
California and
she has left me with her
dog (a not quite immaculate creature named
Stubby
who sits behind my chair listening to a violin and
a typewriter).
they say
fire-eaters, traffic cops, boxers and
clerks in department stores
sometimes know the
truth. (I do what I
can.)
the best one can settle for
is an afternoon
with the rent paid, some food in the refrigerator,
and death something like
a bad painting by a bad painter
(that you finally buy because there’s not
anything else
around).
my love has gone looking for an apartment
in Venice, California across the top of the sky
something marches upsidedown;
praying for a best seller
waiting for my novelist friend to put the
word down
she sits in the kitchen
thinking about the madhouse
thinking about her x-husband
while I entertain her 3 year old child
who is now in the bathtub;
well, listen, I guess after a madhouse or
2 you need a f
ew breaks…
my novelist friend may be crazy now
or she wouldn’t be in the same house
with me,
or maybe I’m the one who’s crazy:
she’s told me a couple of times she’s going to
cut off my balls if I do this thing or
that thing.
well, taking a chance with my balls on the line
that way
it had better be a good novel
or at least a bad one that is a best seller.
I sit here rolling cigarette after cigarette
while listening to her
type.
I suppose that for each genius launched
5 or 6 people must suffer for
it
them
him
her.
very well.
that one
your child has no name
your hair has no color
your face has no flesh
your feet have no toes
your country has ten flags
your voice has no tongue
your ideas slide like snakes
your eyes do not match
you eat bouquets of flowers
throw poisoned meat to the dogs
I see you linger in alleys with a club
I see you with a knife for anybody
I see you peddling a fishhead for a heart
and when the sun comes churning down
you’ll come walking in from the kitchen