For Jeff Sheppard
No publication
No money
No star
No fuck
A friend came over to the house
a few days ago and read one of my poems.
He came back today and asked to read the
same poem over again. After he finished
reading it, he said, “It makes me want
to write poetry.”
My Nose Is Growing Old
Yup.
A long lazy September look
in the mirror
say it’s true:
I’m 31
and my nose is growing
old.
It starts about ½
an inch
below the bridge
and strolls geriatrically
down
for another inch or so:
stopping.
Fortunately, the rest
of the nose is comparatively
young.
I wonder if girls
will want me with an
old nose.
I can hear them now
the heartless bitches!
“He’s cute
but his nose
is old.”
Crab Cigar
I was watching a lot of crabs
eating in the tide pools
of the Pacific a few days ago.
When I say a lot: I mean
hundreds of crabs. They eat
like cigars.
The Sidney Greenstreet Blues
I think something beautiful
and amusing is gained
by remembering Sidney Greenstreet,
but it is a fragile thing.
The hand picks up a glass.
The eye looks at the glass
and then hand, glass and eye
fall away.
Comets
There are comets
that flash through
our mouths wearing
the grace
of oceans and galaxies.
God knows,
we try to do the best
we can.
There are comets
connected to chemicals
that telescope
down our tongues
to burn out against
the air.
I know
we do.
There are comets
that laugh at us
from behind our teeth
wearing the clothes
of fish and birds.
We try.
I Live in the Twentieth Century
For Marcia
I live in the Twentieth Century
and you lie here beside me. You
were unhappy when you fell asleep.
There was nothing I could do about
it. I felt helpless. Your face
is so beautiful that I cannot stop
to describe it, and there’s nothing
I can do to make you happy while
you sleep.
The Castle of the Cormorants
Hamlet with
a cormorant
under his arm
married Ophelia.
She was still
wet from drowning.
She looked like
a white flower
that had been
left in the
rain too long.
I love you,
said Ophelia,
and I love
that dark
bird you
hold in
your arms.
Big Sur
February 1958
Lovers
I changed her bedroom:
raised the ceiling four feet,
removed all of her things
(and the clutter of her life)
painted the walls white,
placed a fantastic calm
in the room,
a silence that almost had a scent,
put her in a low brass bed
with white satin covers,
and I stood there in the doorway
watching her sleep, curled up,
with her face turned away
from me.
Sonnet
The sea is like
an old nature poet
who died of a
heart attack in a
public latrine.
His ghost still
haunts the urinals.
At night he can
be heard walking
around barefooted
in the dark.
Somebody stole
his shoes.
Indirect Popcorn
What a good time fancy!
like a leisure white interior
with long yellow curtains.
I’ll take it to sleep with me tonight
and hope that my dreams are built
toward beautiful blonde women eating
indirect popcorn.
Star Hole
I sit here
on the perfect end
of a star,
watching light
pour itself toward
me.
The light pours
itself through
a small hole
in the sky.
I’m not very happy,
but I can see
how things are
faraway.
Albion Breakfast
For Susan
Last night (here) a long pretty girl
asked me to write a poem about Albion,
so she could put it in a black folder
that has albion printed nicely
in white on the cover.
I said yes. She’s at the store now
getting something for breakfast.
I’ll surprise her with this poem
when she gets back.
Let’s Voyage into the New American House
There are doors
that want to be free
from their hinges to
fly with perfect clouds.
There are windows
that want to be
released from their
frames to run with
the deer through
back country meadows.
There are walls
that want to prowl
with the mountains
through the early
morning dusk.
There are floors
that want to digest
their furniture into
flowers and trees.
There are roofs
that want to travel
gracefully with
the stars through
circles of darkness.
November 3
I’m sitting in a cafe,
drinking a Coke.
A fly is sleeping
on a paper napkin.
I have to wake him up,
so I can wipe my glasses.
There’s a pretty girl
I want to look at.
The Postman
The smell
of vegetables
on a cold day
performs faithfully an act of reality
like a knight in search of the holy grail
or a postman on a rural route looking
for a farm that isn’t there.
Carrots, peppers and berries.
Nerval, Baudelaire and Rimbaud.
Dance toward me, please, as
if you were a star
with light-years piled
on top of your hair,
smiling,
and I will dance toward you
as if I were darkness
with bats piled like a hat
on top of my head.
The Quail
There are three quail in a cage next door,
and they are the sweet delight of our mornings,
c
alling to us like small frosted cakes:
bobwhitebobwhitebobwhite,
but at night they drive our God-damn cat Jake crazy.
They run around that cage like pinballs
as he stands out there,
smelling their asses through the wire.
1942
Piano tree, play
in the dark concert halls
of my uncle,
twenty-six years old, dead
and homeward bound
on a ship from Sitka,
his coffin travels
like the fingers
of Beethoven
over a glass
of wine.
Piano tree, play
in the dark concert halls
of my uncle,
a legend of my childhood, dead,
they send him back
to Tacoma.
At night his coffin
travels like the birds
that fly beneath the sea,
never touching the sky.
Piano tree, play
in the dark concert halls
of my uncle,
take his heart
for a lover
and take his death
for a bed,
and send him homeward bound
on a ship from Sitka
to bury him
where I was born.
Milk for the Duck
ZAP!
unlaid / 20 days
my sexual image
isn’t worth a shit.
If I were dead
I couldn’t attract
a female fly.
The Return of the Rivers
All the rivers run into the sea;
yet the sea is not full;
unto the place from whence the rivers come,
thither they return again.
It is raining today
in the mountains.
It is a warm green rain
with love
in its pockets
for spring is here,
and does not dream
of death.
Birds happen music
like clocks ticking heavens
in a land
where children love spiders,
and let them sleep
in their hair.
A slow rain sizzles
on the river
like a pan
full of frying flowers,
and with each drop
of rain
the ocean
begins again.
A Good-Talking Candle
I had a good-talking candle
last night in my bedroom.
I was very tired but I wanted
somebody to be with me,
so I lit a candle
and listened to its comfortable
voice of light until I was asleep.
The Horse That Had a Flat Tire
Once upon a valley
there came down
from some goldenblue mountains
a handsome young prince
who was riding
a dawncolored horse
named Lordsburg.
I love you
You’re my breathing castle
Gentle so gentle
We’ll live forever
there was a beautiful maiden
whom the prince
drifted into love with
like a New Mexico made from
apple thunder and long
glass beds.
I love you
You’re my breathing castle
Gentle so gentle
We’ll live forever
The prince enchanted
the maiden
and they rode off
on the dawncolored horse
named Lordsburg
toward the goldenblue mountains.
I love you
You’re my breathing castle
Gentle so gentle
We’ll live forever
They would have lived
happily ever after
if the horse hadn’t had
a flat tire
in front of a dragon’s
house.
Kafka’s Hat
With the rain falling
surgically against the roof,
I ate a dish of ice cream
that looked like Kafka’s hat.
It was a dish of ice cream
tasting like an operating table
with the patient staring
up at the ceiling.
Nine Things
It’s night
and a numbered beauty
lapses at the wind,
chortles with the
branches of a tree,
giggles,
plays shadow dance
with a dead kite,
cajoles affection
from falling leaves,
and knows four
other things.
One is the color
of your hair.
Linear Farewell, Nonlinear Farewell
When he went out the door,
he said he wasn’t coming back,
but he came back, the son-
ofabitch, and now I’m pregnant,
and he won’t get off his ass.
Mating Saliva
A girl in a green mini-
skirt, not very pretty, walks
down the street.
A businessman stops, turns
to stare at her ass
that looks like a moldy refrigerator.
There are now 200,000,000 people
in America.
Sit Comma and Creeley Comma
It’s spring and the nun
like a black frog
builds her tarpaper shack
beside the lake.
How beautiful she is
(and looks) surrounded
by her rolls of tarpaper.
They know her name
and they speak her name.
Automatic Anthole
Driven by hunger, I had another
forced bachelor dinner tonight.
I had a lot of trouble making
up my mind whether to eat Chinese
food or have a hamburger. God,
I hate eating dinner alone. It’s
like being dead.
The Symbol
When I was hitch-hiking down to Big Sur,
Moby Dick stopped and picked me up. He was driving
a truckload of sea gulls to San Luis Obispo.
“Do you like being a truckdriver better than you
do a whale?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Moby Dick said. “Hoffa is a lot better
to us whales than Captain Ahab ever was.
The old fart.”
I Cannot Answer You Tonight in Small Portions
I cannot answer you tonight in small portions.
Torn apart by stormy love’s gate, I float
like a phantom facedown in a well where
the cold dark water reflects vague half-built
stars
and trades all our affection, touching, sleeping
together for tribunal distance standing like
a drowned train just beyond a pile of Eskimo
skeletons.
Your Catfish Friend
If I were to live my life
in catfish forms