The People Look Like Flowers at Last: New Poems
Page 9
the police helicopter keeps circling over the yard
“what do they want?” I ask her.
“they’re probably looking for you,” she says.
this is not as far-fetched as you might think:
I went into a bar one night with some friends
and the owner came out from around the bar
and asked to speak to me.
“I don’t know if we can serve you or not,
you must promise to be good,
you created quite a fuss the last time you
were here.”
I promised him to be good and that night
I drank under a great deal of strain.
anyhow, the helicopter keeps circling
and it is one o’clock in the afternoon
but the night before it had circled and circled
shining its beam into the backyard
and into the crapper.
it had circled for 45 minutes, then
had left.
now it is back.
“what the hell?” I say,
“they want you,” she says,
“this is ridiculous,” I say.
I walk into the backyard.
there’s nothing out there:
walnut trees, bamboo stalks, a discarded
sofa and grass 3 feet high.
I stand out there and watch the helicopter
circling, circling.
it finally leaves.
I come back in.
“I feel like John Dillinger,” I say.
“you look like John Dillinger,” she says.
I walk to the mirror.
it’s true:
I look like John Dillinger,
but no woman in a red dress could ever
finger me. I’m
too smart.
ah
flamingo pain,
burnt fingers trying to
light the last of this
joint
in a place described
by terrified ladies
with money in their purses
as a “rat hole.”
“you can spit on the floor here,”
I tell them.
but no, from
a safe
distance, it appears
they’d rather discuss
my poetry.
of course
according to the latest scientific
study
it takes 325 years for the last
brain cell
to pop.
now I realize that
most of the girls
I met in bars
and brought home with me
were lying about
their
age.
the dream, the dream
there is always some new Carmen just around
some corner
somewhere
but then the Carmens never seem to
last;
the Carmens hardly last any time at
all.
I see this in the eyes of men
everywhere—
men sitting at lunch counters
men driving buses
men giving political speeches
men pulling teeth
men in tiger cages
men I see everywhere…
the man I see while I shave
looks back at me through slit-eyes
his Carmen also gone—
that man (me) is now
thinking about what that
razor might really
do, the thought is always
there—
but the game keeps us
going: there is always some new Carmen
waiting
somewhere
just around some
corner.
note on the tigress
first, a terrible argument.
next, we made love.
now, at last, I lay peacefully
on her large bed
which is
spread with a field of gracious flowers,
my head and belly down,
head sideways,
sprayed by shaded light
as she bathes quietly in the
other room.
it is all beyond me
as are most things.
I listen to classical music on a small radio.
she bathes.
I hear the splashing of water.
poem for my daughter
I spoon it
in: strained chicken noodle dinner
junior prunes
junior fruit dessert.
spoon it in and
for Christ’s sake
don’t blame the
child
don’t blame the
govt.
don’t blame the bosses or the
working classes—
spoon it down
into that little mouth
like melted
wax.
a friend phones:
“whatya gonna do now, Hank?”
“what the hell ya mean, what am I gonna
do?”
“I mean ya got responsibility now, ya gotta bring the
kid up
right.”
I feed her instead:
spoon it in!
may she achieve
a place in Beverly Hills
with never any need for unemployment compensation
and never have to sell to the highest
bidder.
and never fall in love with a soldier or a killer of any
kind.
and may she
appreciate Beethoven and Jelly Roll Morton and
beautiful dresses.
she’s got a real
chance:
there was once the
Theoric Fund and now there’s the
Great Society.
“are ya still gonna play the horses? are ya still gonna
drink? are ya still gonna—?”
“yes.”
she is a waving flower in the wind and the dead center of
my heart—
now she sleeps beautifully like a
boat on the Nile.
maybe some day she will
bury me.
that would be nice
if it weren’t a
responsibility.
sheets
those sheets you’ve got there,
said the old dame
in the housewares dept.,
are for a double bed.
do you have a double bed or a
single bed?
well, you see, I answered,
my bed is an unusual bed, it’s
kind of a single-and-a-
half.
describe your bed, she said.
what?
describe your
bed.
I’d rather not, I said.
well, said the old dame, I want you to
know the sheets you’ve got there are
for a double bed, and if you’ve got a single
bed, it’s against the state
law.
what? I asked. say that
again.
I said, it’s against the state
law.
you mean? I asked.
I mean, you can’t bring these sheets back
after you’ve opened the
package.
all right, I said, give me a couple of
singles.
&
nbsp; she treated me then with comfortable
disdain. I believe the old dame had been in
sheets all her
life. I think they should put young girls
in the sheets dept.
after all, sheets don’t make me think of sleep
at all
but something else
entirely. especially crisp white new
sheets.
they ought to put old dames like her in
dog food. or garden supplies. and
when she gave me the singles I knew she knew I slept
alone. like she
did.
three
while most people
converse it all away
I
write it down.
sick leave
there I am flat on my belly, Hem is dead, Shake is dead,
the fish I have caught and eaten and shitted are dead
and the doc is ramming a glass tube up my ass,
a glass tube with a little light on the end of it,
and I am hoping for a medical excuse
for 2 more days of sick leave
and the doc plays right along: “ya got some beauts there,
you oughta be cut…” well, the White Russians used to
cut a hole in a man and take hold of the end of the intestine
and nail it to a tree and then force the man to
run around and around the tree.
he pulls the glass tube out of my ass
and part of me along with it
he has a face like a walnut and when his nurse
bends over (which is often)
her butt is like a big soft pillow or
powdered doughnut, no blood, just clouds,
and I say, “Doc, add a day to the excuse,
I can feel the pain all the way down to my nuts…”
“sure,” he says, “sure, I know a lot of boys
from the Post Office, all nice boys.”
at home I screw the cap off the bottle
and have the first good one; it rained while he rammed me:
the rain sits glittering in the screen
like sugar flies eating dreams,
and I split the Racing Form with my thumb,
then call my bookie,
“…give me 2 across on Indian Blood,
5 win on Lady Fanfare, 5 place on The Rage.”
I hang up and think softly of Kafka
sleeping under the paws of gophers
as the lady across the hall sings to her canary.
love has clicked off and on
like a cigarette lighter
and now her love is a
bird.
it gets like that when not much happens
and you play on a small stage,
and I pin my medical exemption to
the front of one of my old paintings
rub some salve up my ass
and pour another drink.
my father
my father liked rules and doing things
the hard way.
he spoke of responsibilities and laws
and things that just had to be done correctly.
a man must work, a man must eat.
a man must own property and mow his lawn.
I turned out to be a drunkard and wanderer
and his hard-packed letters followed me everywhere.
I watched the pigeons in the rain in
New Orleans while his letters said,
get going, make something of yourself!
how hard the world tries and how hard
everything has been for me.
my father is old and gray now and when
I walk into his house he complains
about the mud I track in. he
is proud of his house and garden and
he sits back and waits. but I
am horrified as he speaks to me:
he has never thought of death! he does
not think of dying! as he talks, his
mouth is a round hole; he leans back content
upon his pillows. when I leave he says,
come again, come again.
how many times and why?
who is my father? did he ever
play a mandolin or swim the icy waters?
I know my father: he is dead. there is dead
mud and there is a tree branch. the tree
branch works easily in the wind and
between the leaves you see glimpses of the sun.
it’s quiet. it’s real. it’s warm.
and the mud on the floor is my father’s heart
and his brain.
the old woman
she lived in the last old house
on the block—
you know the kind: vine-covered, dark, quiet.
her neighbors were gone—
nothing but high-rise apartments everywhere.
you’d see her two or three times a week
pushing her little shopping cart on its two wheels;
then she’d come back with stuff in bags,
go into the house, and that was
it. she never spoke to anybody.
it was last week about 3:30 p.m.
that her house began sliding off its foundation.
it was a very slow slide
and you got the idea that the house was just stepping
forward to take a walk down the street—
except some of the lumber began to snap—
it sounded like rifle shots, and the house moaned just a
little—a dark green moan.
somebody called the fire dept.
and men were running around shutting off the gas
and shouting at each other
and telling the crowd to keep back
and along came one of those television trucks
and they filmed the house
sagging toward the street.
then the front door opened and the little old
lady came out.
they put the camera on her and a woman ran up with a
mike.
“how long have you been living in your house?”
“55 years.”
“do you have insurance?”
“no.”
“what will you do
now?”
“go back to Ireland,” she said.
then she walked away and left them all just standing
there.
what made you lose your inspiration?
Norman is drizzling off into a self-pleased
imbecility as he sits on my couch and
giggles, pulls at his
diseased beard
and talks about his girlfriend Katrinka,
Eugene Debs, F. Scott Fitzgerald and
LSD.
a bad writer, almost unpublished, this
gives him strength as
he sits there and tells me
that my own writing has gone way down
from volcanic burst to cigarette-lighter
flash.
I give him something to drink and
he gets down on the floor and
begins talking into my tape machine.
I light a cigar and
listen.
“I want to be the Number One Writer of Our
Time. I want to walk down the street and hear people
say, ‘hey, look, there goes Norman!’ I want
people to
like my poems, I want people to go mad over my
poems…”
I decide that this is probably an honest tape
but a bad one
and I no longer
listen.
about 30 minutes and 3 beer cans later
the tape runs its little tail
out. Norman straightens his tie,
gets off his knees and sits
down.
“Jack M. says he’s gotta make 8 grand this year or he’s
finished.”
I try another
cigar.
“I’m having luncheon with Ray
Bradbury, Tuesday.”
I don’t answer.
“Jesus!”
he suddenly leaps up, runs into my bathroom and
begins vomiting. it continues for some
time.
“I feel better,” he says
coming back
in.
“have another drink,” I say.
“I’ll drive you to your class in
the morning.”
“fine,” he says, skimming off the top of a beer.
then he looks at me and asks,
“where have you been published
lately?”
I wave my outstretched
palms and shrug.
“Jesus, tough! what made you lose your
inspiration?”
“drink. people. marriage. people.
marriage again. a child. drink.
people. jobs. no jobs. drink and
people.”
“my professor would like you to talk to
his class. he won the Lamont Poetry Prize and he
digs you.”
“tell your professor to go to hell. tell him
I’m finished.”
“you’re touchy.”
“no, I’m just a flash in the
pan.”
we drink and drink. soon he is asleep
on the couch, 250 pounds of him rattling the ceiling
with his poetry.
I go into the bedroom and set the clock for his
10 o’clock English class. the drink goes down
better now, but climbing into bed