used to hide from the dinosaurs
when they came to drink at the river.
The trout hid in subways, castles
and automobiles. They waited patiently
for the dinosaurs to go away.
The Chinese Checker Players
When I was six years old
I played Chinese checkers
with a woman
who was ninety-three years old.
She lived by herself
in an apartment down the hall
from ours.
We played Chinese checkers
every Monday and Thursday nights.
While we played she usually talked
about her husband
who had been dead for seventy years,
and we drank tea and ate cookies
and cheated.
I’ve Never Had It Done so Gently Before
For M
The sweet juices of your mouth
are like castles bathed in honey.
I’ve never had it done so gently before.
You have put a circle of castles
around my penis and you swirl them
like sunlight on the wings of birds.
Our Beautiful West Coast Thing
We are a coast people
There is nothing but ocean out beyond us.
—Jack Spicer
I sit here dreaming
long thoughts of California
at the end of a November day
below a cloudy twilight
near the Pacific
listening to The Mamas and The Papas
THEY’RE GREAT
singing a song about breaking
somebody’s heart and digging it!
I think I’ll get up
and dance around the room.
Here I go!
Man
With his hat on
he’s about five inches taller
than a taxicab.
The Silver Stairs of Ketchikan
2 A.M. is the best time
to climb the silver stairs
of Ketchikan and go up into the trees
and the dark prowling deer.
When my wife gets out of bed
to feed the baby at 2 A.M., she turns
on all the lights in Ketchikan
and people start banging on the doors
and swearing at one another.
That’s the best time
to climb the silver stairs
of Ketchikan and go up into the trees
and the dark prowling deer.
Hollywood
January 26, 1967
at 3:15 in the afternoon
Sitting here in Los Angeles
parked on a rundown residential
back street,
staring up at the word
HOLLYWOOD
written on some lonely mountains,
I’m listening very carefully
to rock and roll radio
(Lovin’ Spoonful)
(Jefferson Airplane)
while people are slowly
putting out their garbage cans.
Your Necklace Is Leaking
For Marcia
Your necklace is leaking
and blue light drips
from your beads to cover
your beautiful breasts
with a clear African dawn.
Haiku Ambulance
A piece of green pepper
fell
off the wooden salad bowl:
so what?
It’s Going Down
Magic is the color of the thing you wear
with a dragon for a button
and a lion for a lamp
with a carrot for a collar
and a salmon for a zipper.
Hey! You’re turning me on: baby.
That’s the way it’s going down.
WOW!
Alas, Measured Perfectly
Saturday, August 25, 1888. 5:20 P.M.
is the name of a photograph of two
old women in a front yard, beside
a white house. One of the women is
sitting in a chair with a dog in her
lap. The other woman is looking at
some flowers. Perhaps the women are
happy, but then it is Saturday, August
25, 1888. 5:21 P.M., and all over.
Hey, Bacon!
The moon like:
mischievous bacon
crisps its desire
(while)
I harbor myself
toward two eggs
over easy.
The Rape of Ophelia
Her clothes spread wide and mermaid-like awhile
they bore her up: which time she chanted snatches
of old tunes, and sweet Ophelia floated down the river
past black stones until she came to an evil fisherman
who was dressed in clothes that had no childhood,
and beautiful Ophelia floated like an April church
into his shadow, and he, the evil fisherman of our dreams,
waded out into the river and captured the poor mad girl,
and taking her into the deep grass, he killed her
with the shock of his body, and he placed her back
into the river, and Laertes said, Alas, then she is drown’d!
Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia.
A CandleLion Poem
For Michael
Turn a candle inside out
and you’ve got the smallest
portion of a lion standing
there at the edge of the
shadows.
I Feel Horrible. She Doesn’t
I feel horrible. She doesn’t
love me and I wander around
the house like a sewing machine
that’s just finished sewing
a turd to a garbage can lid.
Cyclops
A glass of lemonade
travels across this world
like the eye of the cyclops
If a child doesn’t drink
the lemonade,
Ulysses will.
Flowers for Those You Love
Butcher, baker, candlestick maker,
anybody can get VD,
including those you love.
Please see a doctor
if you think you’ve got it.
You’ll feel better afterwards
and so will those you love.
The Galilee Hitch-Hiker
The Galilee Hitch-Hiker
Part 1
Baudelaire was
driving a Model A
across Galilee.
He picked up a
hitch-hiker named
Jesus who had
been standing among
a school of fish,
feeding them
pieces of bread.
“Where are you
going?” asked
Jesus, getting
into the front
seat.
“Anywhere, anywhere
out of this world!”
shouted
Baudelaire.
“I’ll go with you
as far as
Golgotha,”
said Jesus.
“I have a
concession
at the carnival
there, and I
must not be
late.”
The American Hotel
Part 2
Baudelaire was sitting
in a doorway with a wino
on San Francisco’s skidrow.
The wino was a million
years old and could remember
dinosaurs.
Baudelaire and the wino
were drinking Petri Muscatel.
“One must always be drunk,”
said Baudelaire.
“I live in the American Hotel,”
said the wino. “An
d I can
remember dinosaurs.”
“Be you drunken ceaselessly,”
said Baudelaire.
1939
Part 3
Baudelaire used to come
to our house and watch
me grind coffee.
That was in 1939
and we lived in the slums
of Tacoma.
My mother would put
the coffee beans in the grinder.
I was a child
and would turn the handle,
pretending that it was
a hurdy-gurdy,
and Baudelaire would pretend
that he was a monkey,
hopping up and down
and holding out
a tin cup.
The Flowerburgers
Part 4
Baudelaire opened
up a hamburger stand
in San Francisco,
but he put flowers
between the buns.
People would come in
and say, “Give me a
hamburger with plenty
of onions on it.”
Baudelaire would give
them a flowerburger
instead and the people
would say, “What kind
of a hamburger stand
is this?”
The Hour of Eternity
Part 5
“The Chinese
read the time
in the eyes
of cats,”
said Baudelaire
and went into
a jewelry store
on Market Street.
He came out
a few moments
later carrying
a twenty-one
jewel Siamese
cat that he
wore on the
end of a
golden chain.
Salvador Dali
Part 6
“Are you
or aren’t you
going to eat
your soup,
you bloody old
cloud merchant?”
Jeanne Duval
shouted,
hitting Baudelaire
on the back
as he sat
daydreaming
out the window.
Baudelaire was
startled.
Then he laughed
like hell,
waving his spoon
in the air
like a wand
changing the room
into a painting
by Salvador
Dali, changing
the room
into a painting
by Van Gogh.
A Baseball Game
Part 7
Baudelaire went
to a baseball game
and bought a hot dog
and lit up a pipe
of opium.
The New York Yankees
were playing
the Detroit Tigers.
In the fourth inning
an angel committed
suicide by jumping
off a low cloud.
The angel landed
on second base,
causing the
whole infield
to crack like
a huge mirror.
The game was
called on
account of
fear.
Insane Asylum
Part 8
Baudelaire went
to the insane asylum
disguised as a
psychiatrist.
He stayed there
for two months
and when he left,
the insane asylum
loved him so much
that it followed
him all over
California,
laughed when the
insane asylum
rubbed itself
up against his
leg like a
strange cat.
My Insect Funeral
Part 9
When I was a child
I had a graveyard
where I buried insects
and dead birds under
a rose tree.
I would bury the insects
in tin foil and match boxes.
I would bury the birds
in pieces of red cloth.
It was all very sad
and I would cry
as I scooped the dirt
into their small graves
with a spoon.
Baudelaire would come
and join in
my insect funerals
saying little prayers
the size of
dead birds.
San Francisco
February 1958
It’s Raining in Love
I don’t know what it is,
but I distrust myself
when I start to like a girl
a lot.
It makes me nervous.
I don’t say the right things
or perhaps I start
to examine,
evaluate,
compute
what I am saying.
If I say, “Do you think it’s going to rain?”
and she says, “I don’t know,”
I start thinking: Does she really like me?
In other words
I get a little creepy.
A friend of mine once said,
“It’s twenty times better to be friends
with someone
than it is to be in love with them.”
I think he’s right and besides,
it’s raining somewhere, programming flowers
and keeping snails happy.
That’s all taken care of.
BUT
if a girl likes me a lot
and starts getting real nervous
and suddenly begins asking me funny questions
and looks sad if I give the wrong answers
and she says things like,
“Do you think it’s going to rain?”
and I say, “It beats me,”
and she says, “Oh,”
and looks a little sad
at the clear blue California sky,
I think: Thank God, it’s you, baby, this time
instead of me.
Poker Star
It’s a star that looks
like a poker game above
the mountains of eastern
Oregon.
There are three men playing.
They are all sheepherders.
One of them has two pair,
the others have nothing.
To England
There are no postage stamps that send letters
back to England three centuries ago,
no postage stamps that make letters
travel back until the grave hasn’t been dug yet,
and John Donne stands looking out the window,
it is just beginning to rain this April morning,
and the birds are falling into the trees
like chess pieces into an unplayed game,
and John Donne sees the postman coming up the street,
the postman walks very carefully because his cane
is made of glass.
I Lie Here in a Strange Girl’s Apartment
For Marcia
I lie here in a strange girl’s apartment.
She has poison oak, a bad sunburn
and is unhappy.
She moves about the place
like distant gestures of solemn glass.
She opens and closes things.
She turns the water on,
and she turns the water off.
All the sounds she makes are faraway.
They could be in a different city.
It is dusk and people are staring
out the windows of that city.
Their eyes are filled with the sounds
of what she is doing.
Hey! This Is What It’s All About