March 16, 1969
We Stopped at Perfect Days
We stopped at perfect days
and got out of the car.
The wind glanced at her hair.
It was as simple as that.
I turned to say something—
Chosen by Beauty to Be a Handmaiden of the Stars
Chosen by beauty to be a handmaiden of the stars,
she passes like a silver brush
across the lens of a telescope.
She brushes the stars, the galaxies
and the light-years into the order that
we know them.
30 Cents, Two Transfers, Love
Thinking hard about you
I got onto the bus
and paid 30 cents car fare
and asked the driver for
two transfers
before discovering that I
was alone.
Please
Do you think of me
as often as I think
of you?
There Is Darkness on Your Lantern
There is darkness on your lantern
and pumpkins in your wind,
and Oh, they clutter up your mind
with their senseless bumping
while your heart is like a sea gull
frozen into a long distance telephone
call.
I’d like to take the darkness
off your lantern and change the pumpkins
into sky fields of ordered comets
and disconnect the refrigerator telephone
that frightens your heart into standing
still.
Professional, Nonoffensive, Bland
The gunman holds the wind
in his hand.
Autumn and spring pass like robberies
across his eyes.
He doesn’t blink while one stops leaves
and the other starts them.
The gunman is a friend to the changing
of the seasons.
He holds the wind in his hand.
Cellular Coyote
He’s howling in the pines
at the edge of your fingerprints.
Parking Omelet
Walking on crow eggs, mama,
listening to the shells break
like cars being parked on
asphalt.
Yeah, There Was Always Going to Be a June 5, 1968
My telephone rang in the middle of the night,
but I didn’t answer it. It rang and rang
and rang and SHUT UP! and rang as if it were
possessed.
I always figure that good news doesn’t travel
in the middle of the night, so I didn’t answer
the telephone.
I let it go to hell. I was right, too.
It was somebody calling to tell me that Kennedy
had been hit.
Lemon Lard
Lemon Lard: with your odd snowshoes
and your ability to remember dates,
you’re all that you’ll ever want to
be.
Just an Ordinary Girl, 118
Just an ordinary girl, 118
pounds, chipped front tooth, cute,
born in Reno, Nevada, a student
at SF State, she wants candles
married to her womb by the color
of a telescopic saint, so that all
her children will be adventures
in light.
Restaurant
Fragile, fading 37,
she wears her wedding ring like a trance
and stares straight down at an empty coffee cup
as if she were looking into the mouth of a dead bird.
Dinner is over. Her husband has gone to the toilet.
He will be back soon and then it will be her turn
to go to the toilet.
It Was Your Idea to Go to Bed with Her
Snowflaked as if by an invisible polar bear
—unlucky bastard,
you’re sitting on the fender of her kisses
while she drives the car down into the
perfect center of ice.
April 7, 1969
I feeI so bad today
that I want to write a poem.
poem.
Shellfish
Always spend a penny
as if you were spending a
dollar
and always spend a dollar
as if you were spending
a wounded eagle and always
spend a wounded eagle as if
you were spending the very
sky itself.
A Closet Freezes
In a room that knows your death
a closet freezes like a postage stamp.
A coat, a dress is hanging there.
Late Starting Dawn
It’s a late starting dawn that breathes my vision,
inhales and exhales the sound of waking birds
and pokes ten miles of cold gray sky at a deer
standing alone in a meadow.
A Witch and a 6 Pack of Double Century Ale
A witch and a 6 pack of Double Century Ale
that’s what I want to do on a rainy winter night
at her place.
Flight Handbook
He wants to fly,
sitting next to me on the bus,
reading a copy of Flight Handbook.
He has one of the largest
thumbnails I’ve ever seen.
As he dreams of bird-like mannerisms,
I stare at his thumb.
Mouths That Kissed in the Hot Ashes of Pompeii
Mouths that kissed
in the hot ashes of Pompeii
are returning
and eyes that could adore their beloved only
in the fires of Pompeii
are returning
and locked bodies that squirmed in ecstasy
in the lava of Pompeii
are returning
and lovers who found their perfect passion
in the death of Pompeii
are returning,
and they’re letting themselves in
again with the names of your sons
and your daughters.
The Elbow of a Dead Duck
A transparent bridge across
the elbow of a dead duck
beckons, friends, like a boiled
radio station
toward a better understanding
of yourself in these crisis-ridden
times.
Diet
Pretty: except for the
puncture bruises pn her
arm. Also, she’s a little
thin.
The Alarm-Colored Shadow of a Frightened Ant
The alarm-colored shadow of a frightened ant
wants to make friends with you, learn all about
your childhood, cry together, come live with
you.
Cameo Turret
That’s where I
see your face,
baby, on a tank
all around the
cannon.
33-1/3 Sized Lions
33-1/3 sized
lions are roaring at the black gates of Fame
with jaws that look like record company courtesans
brushing their teeth
with would-be rock and roll stars
in motel bathrooms
with a perfect view of hot car roofs
in the just-signed-up
afternoon.
The Virgo Grace of Your Ways Versus This Poem
Hilda,
I keep wanting to write a poem
in praise of your beautiful energy
and because I like the Virgo grace
of your ways.
Funky as it is: I’m sorry,
forgive me, I guess this is
that poem.
A Lyrical Want, an Endocrine Gland Fancy
A lyrical want, an endocrine gland fancy,
a telescope that I thought had no thorns
have led me to a pain that I cannot pronounce.
It gathers around me like a convention of translators
for a language that does not exist with all those
meetings to attend.
I sit here, an arch-villain of romance,
thinking about you. Gee, I’m sorry
I made you unhappy, but there was nothing
I could do about it because I have to be free.
Perhaps everything would have been different
if you had stayed at the table or asked me
to go out with you to look at the moon,
instead of getting up and leaving me alone with
her.
Vampire
SIow/dark. . . black/seeming
approach:
a plant by an open window
January 17
Drinking wine this afternoon
I realize the days are getting
longer.
Too Many Lifetimes like This One, Right?
Too many lifetimes like this one, right?
Hungover, surrounded by general goofiness,
lonely, can’t get it up, I feel just like
a pile of bleached cat shit.
Color as Beginning
Forget love
I want to die
in your yellow
hair.
In Her Sweetness Where She Folds My Wounds
In her sweetness where she folds my wounds
there is a flower that bees cannot afford.
It is too rich for them and would change
their wings into operas and all their honey
into the lonesome maps of a nonexistent
California county.
When she has finished folding all my wounds
she puts them away in a dresser where the
drawers smell like the ghost of a bicycle.
Afterwards I rage at her: demanding that her
affections always be constant to my questions.
Up against the Ivory Tower
I’m sitting here (at a cafe) thinking
about writing a poem. What will I write
about? I don’t know. I just feel like it
when suddenly a young man in a hurry
walks up to me and says, “Can I use your
pen?”
There’s an envelope in his hand. “I want
to address this.” He takes my pen
and addresses the envelope. He’s very serious
about it. He’s really using the
pen.
All Secrets of Past Tense Have just Come My Way
All secrets of past tense have just come my way,
but I still don’t know what I’n1 going to do
next.
Melting Ice Cream at the Edge of Your Final Thought
Oh well, call it a
life.
My Concern for Your Tomato Plants
l stare at your tomato plants.
You’re not, I’m not pleased with the way
they are growing.
I try to think of ways to help them.
I study them. What do I know about tomatoes?
“Perhaps some nitrate,” I suggest.
But I don’t know anything and now I’ve taken
to gossiping about them. I’m as shameless
as their lack of growing.
“88” Poems
Pity the Morning Light That Refuses to Wait for Dawn
Pity the morning light
that refuses to wait for dawn
and rushes foolishly
with its mercury pride
to challenge a responsibility
that knows only triumph
and gently bends the stars
to lit its will and cleans up
afterwards all that poor
wasted light, leaving not
a trace behind.
Snow Makes Me Sad
Flying East today first to Chicago,
then North Carolina snow makes me sad
below in the mountains of the West.
It is a white sadness that rises
from California, Nevada, Utah
and Colorado to visit the airplane,
to sit here beside me like a snowy 1943
map of my childhood.
As the Bruises Fade, the Lightning Aches
As the bruises fade, the lightning aches.
Last week, making love, you bit me.
Now the blue and dark have gone
and yellow bruises grow toward pale daffodils,
then paler to become until my body
is all my own and what that ever got me.
I Am Summoned by a Door
l am summoned by a door
but forgotten by the knock
and left standing here alone
in a long silent hall, like
a marble intestine, that knows
my name.
At Last Our Bodies Coincide
At last our bodies coincide.
I’ll bet you thought this
would never happen. Neither
did I. It’s a pleasant
surprise.
Let Us Please Learn New Words That Mean As Much As Direction
Let us please learn new words that mean as much
as direction: wife.
Deer Tracks
Beautiful, sobbing, high-geared fucking
and then to lie silently like deer tracks
in the freshly-fallen snow beside the one
you love. That’s all.
Table of Contents
ROMMEL DRIVES ON DEEP INTO EGYPT:
ROMMEL DRIVES ON DEEP INTO EGYPT
A 48-Year-Old Burglar from San Diego
Have You Ever Had a Witch Bloom like a Highway
The Memoirs of Jesse James
Flora Shakespeare
15%
Romeo and Juliet
Have You Ever Felt like a Wounded Cow
Mrs. Myrtle Tate, Movie Projectionist
Critical Can Opener
Love’s Not the Way to Treat a Friend
The Net Wt. of Winter Is 6.75 Ozs.
Abalone Curry
Cannibal Carpenter
Sheep
Donner Party
Formal Portrait
—2
The Sister Cities of Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Hiroshima, Japan
Wood
Negative Clank
Jules Verne Zucchini
She Sleeps this very Evening in Greenbrook Castle
Third Eye
You’ll Have to Buy Some More Chairs
Feasting and Drinking Went on Far into the Night
1891-1944
Hinged to Forgetfulness like a Door
Affectionate Light Bulb
Just Because
The History of Bolivia
Wildwood Shadow
Propelled by Portals Whose Only Shame
Clad in Garments like a Silver Disease
Lions Are Growing like Yellow Roses on the Wind
Nice Ass
Casablanca
8 Millimeter
At the Earliest Dark Answer
All Girls Should Have a Poem
We Stopped at Perfect Days
Chosen by Beauty to Be a Handmaiden of the Stars
30 Cents, Two Transfers, Love
Please
There Is Darkness on Your Lantern
Professional, Nonoffensive, Bland
Cellular Coyote
Parking Omelet
Yeah, There Was Always Going to Be a June 5, 1968
Lemon Lard
Just an Ordinary Girl, 118
Restaurant
It Was Your Idea to Go to Bed with Her
April 7, 1969
Shellfish
A Closet Freezes
Late Starting Dawn
A Witch and a 6 Pack of Double Century Ale
Flight Handbook
Mouths That Kissed in the Hot Ashes of Pompeii
The Elbow of a Dead Duck
Diet
The Alarm-Colored Shadow of a Frightened Ant
Cameo Turret
33-1/3 Sized Lions
The Virgo Grace of Your Ways Versus This Poem
A Lyrical Want, an Endocrine Gland Fancy
The Moon Versus Us Ever Sleeping Together Again
Vampire
January 17
Too Many Lifetimes like This One, Right?
Color as Beginning
In Her Sweetness Where She Folds My Wounds
Up against the Ivory Tower
All Secrets of Past Tense Have just Come My Way
Melting Ice Cream at the Edge of Your Final Thought