and a boy born without eyes
and a kitten without a bird,
nothing but twine
and waiting
and whores dipping hearts in poison,
and exhaust and exhaustion
and the bliss and the kiss of syphilis,
drag down the vines
the broken-foot bottles,
I keep saying
ha ha ha the giants
the giant sun
am I, the giant. our sun
tonight
without sun
your shoes alone without you in them
and I alone frying steaks and drinking beer
and listening to Wagner
the price of the sun,
the price of the sun,
and I don’t give a damn if you never come back.
you don’t know
you don’t know how good it
can get
being in a strange city,
nobody knowing who you
are,
coming in from the low-paying
job,
forgetting dinner,
taking off your shoes,
climbing onto the bed,
lights out
in that cheap dark
room
living with the roaches
or the mice,
hearing the crackling of
the wallpaper
or the rush of small
feet darting
across the floor.
lifting the wine bottle
there in the moonlight
or in the light of the
street lamps and the
neon signs,
the wine entering your
body,
the flare of your match
lighting a
cigarette.
you don’t know how good
it can get
without women,
without a telephone,
without a tv set,
without a car.
with the bathroom down
the hall.
relaxed in the dark
hearing the voices of the
other roomers,
hearing pans rattling,
food frying,
toilets flushing,
arguments,
occasional
laughter.
you don’t know
the names of the
streets,
who the mayor is
or how long you
will remain.
you will remain
until the next city,
the next room,
the next low-paying
job.
the mice will become
bolder.
one will come up on
the dresser,
climb up on the handle
of the coffee cup,
hang there,
looking at you.
you will get up and
approach the mouse.
you are the
intruder.
as you get closer
he still will not
move.
his eyes and your eyes
will intermix.
it is the clash of
centuries.
then he will leap
through the air
in the darkness and
be gone.
you will return to
the bed, smiling,
thinking, he’s lucky,
he doesn’t have to
pay the rent.
you will drink some more
from the wine
bottle,
then rise, take off your
clothing, stack it on
the chair.
you will sit up against
the pillow,
listening to the cars
passing below.
you will get up,
check the alarm clock,
see that it is set for
7:30 a.m.
then, foolishly, you’ll
have to put your pants
on again
to make a bathroom
run.
the hall will be quiet
and empty,
the lights will be out,
there will only be
darkness under each
doorway.
the roomers are
sleeping.
your face
in the bathroom mirror
will grin at
you.
then you will walk
back to your room,
get the pants off
again, hang them over
the back of the
chair that is possibly
older than
you.
the last drink is
best, the last flare of
the match
lighting the last
cigarette.
you hold the match,
still burning,
up against the palm
of your right
hand.
long life line.
too bad.
then to stretch out,
the covers up
against your
neck.
warm covers.
rented covers.
covers of love.
the day seeps slowly
back through your
consciousness.
not much.
then, like the other
roomers, you are
asleep.
you are equal to the
side of a
triangle,
to a mountain in
Peru,
to a tiger
licking its
paw.
you don’t know
how good it can be
until you’ve been
there.
let not
let not the people be your
foundation,
not the young girls,
not the old girls,
not the young men,
not the old men,
not those in-between,
not any of these,
let not the people be your
foundation.
rather
build on sand
build on landfills,
build over cesspools,
build over graveyards,
build even over water,
but don’t build on the
people.
they are a bad bet,
the worst bet you can make.
build it elsewhere,
anywhere else,
anywhere
but on the people,
the headless, heartless
mass
mucking up the
centuries,
the days,
the nights,
the towns, the cities, the
nations,
the earth,
the stratosphere,
mucking up the
light,
mucking up
all chance,
here,
totally mucking
it up
then
now
tomorrow.
anything,
compared to the people,
is a foundation worth
searching for.
anything.
the death of a roach
…when the last fig falls and we are pruned from light,
our golden ladies gleaned of love—
infest us with the mercy
of stone.
calisthenic tempest, kingly pain
the flowers held kisses and blossoms
crackling with lightning power against our
pinioned brain; I watch the roach
as prophets of exile drink
and break their cups.
the gr
asses held long and green their secrets.
now, old ladies cassocked like monks
treadmill the slow poor stairs
bumping their angry canes: solatium! solatium!
and they close themselves in shawls
as the sun rallies new buds to color,
and they think…of onions and biscuits
(beautiful day, isn’t it?)
(did you hear Father Francis? Sunday?)
the roach climbs
(the mirrors of love are broken)
blind yet begotten with life, a dedicated wraith
of pus and antennae.
I take him from his task
with a stab of a finger that wretches
like a stomach against the sick black twisted
death; no bandores here, or philosophical canvas to color
with tantamounts.
I hide him in some hasty packet and flush his ugliness away,
and above me in the mirror, consumed and listening there:
a crevice, a demon declaring his hand:—
all about me the old ladies cackle enraged, infirm
and bleeding
violate,
lepisma,
they attack my tired guts with
canes and pins,
with scrolls and bibles,
with celebrations of
witchcraft
they maim my brain with mercy until I fall witless and ill,
shouting
shouting roominghouses and grass,
shouting apes and horses,
shouting
flowers and kisses: the insects are
suspect—
man can only destroy himself.
the unwritten
it’s been months now: the most
horrible thing I have ever
felt.
and I might have avoided
it.
might have.
maybe not.
but I didn’t and in a way I
couldn’t.
it occurred more quickly than
I could respond.
I should have been more
able,
more ready.
and for some
what was a horror for me
might have been
trivial to them.
but I have never been
“them.”
it’s over now.
the pain of that should be
finished.
but it stays with me.
and that I did not act in
time to prevent it—
but that moment is
gone.
and
I truly hate myself
for the first
time.
I will never recover.
it comes back to me
again and
again.
and in its aftermath,
nothing will ever be
quite right
again—
walking down a
hill,
getting out of
bed,
common tasks,
celebrations,
just
happenings
are
reshaped
by that occurrence.
I was gored
by my own
stupidity.
it was an animal.
it was an animal,
caused by some
human
thing?
would that it was
human.
so I could have
considered it
trivial.
right now
the party’s over, the rooster is
crowing and they’ve called in
the dice, the dancing girls are
snoring, the mice are crawling
in the paper cups, the donkey is
pinned to the tail, the fable has
crawled away to die, love is
covered with dust, the temples
are empty, the bird has flown
the cage, the cage encloses a
midget heart weeping, the dream
has taken a dive and I sit
looking at my hands, looking at
my hands
empty of the sound of the
moment.
the sheep
in centuries past
audiences at symphony concerts
were not afraid to act out their
displeasure at works which
offended
them.
in our time
I have either attended or
listened to
hundreds of concerts
and never have I heard an
audience
express even the mildest displeasure
with any
work.
have our musical artists improved
to such an
extent?
or is it the decay of courage,
the inability of the
mass mind to
reach its own
decisions?
not only in the world of
music
but in the other
world?
the next time you hear
a symphony concert
note
the obedient applause,
the death of the bluebird,
the shading of the sun;
the hooves of the horses from
hell
pounding on the barren
ground
of the human
spirit.
piss
remember once I was sitting in this hotel
room when my woman came in drunk and said,
“Christ, I couldn’t hold it, I had to piss in the
elevator!”
I was drunk too, I was barefoot and in
my shorts.
I got up and walked out the door and down
the hall and pushed the elevator
button.
it came up.
the door opened.
the elevator was empty but sure enough
there in the corner was the
puddle.
as I was standing there a man and a
woman came out of their place
and walked toward the
elevator.
the door was beginning to close
so I held it open with my hand
so they could get
on.
as the door began to close I heard the
woman say,
“that man was in his shorts.”
and just as it closed I heard the man say,
“and he pissed in the elevator.”
I went back to the room and told her,
“they think I pissed in the elevator.”
“who?” she asked.
“people.”
“what people?”
“the people who saw me standing
in my shorts.”
“well, screw them,” she said.
she was sitting there drinking a glass
of wine.
“take a bath,” I said.
“you take a bath,” she said.
“at least take a shower,” I said.
“you take a shower,” she said.
I sat down and poured a glass of
wine.
we were always arguing about
something.
last fight
he’s just a handler
now.
he’s in the gym
watching the young
boxers spar.
he knows all the
moves,
watches the footwork,
the counter-
punching, the leads,
the hooks, the
timing, the
will.
he was a fighter
once,
went a num
ber of
ten rounders.
now he watches
the action,
squinting,
analyzing.
he’s got a gut
now
it bulges out
under his old
sweat shirt.
it’s an afternoon
in the gym.
he can hear them
grunt,
he can hear the
shots, the
big gloves
landing.
inside his head
he can see
himself in the
ring,
he can hear the
screams of the
young girls
again,
the yelling of
the men,
he can feel the
lights,
the canvas
under his feet,
the ropes
squaring him
into
battle.
son-of-a-bitch,
what a
time,
son-of-a-bitch,
what a
life!
Betting on the Muse Page 7
