the luck of the word
throughout the years
I have gotten letters
from men
who say
that reading my
books
has helped them
get through,
go on.
this is high praise
indeed
and I know what
they mean:
my nerve to go
on was helped
by reading
Fante, Dostoevsky,
Lawrence, Celine, Hamsun
and others.
the word
raw on the page,
the similarities of
our hells,
when it all comes
through with
special
force,
those words and
what they speak
of
do help
get our asses
through the
fire.
a good book
can make an almost
impossible
existence,
liveable
for the reader
and
the writer.
bad form
the famous actor sat at the table with
his friends and the friends of the owner
of the horse
who was to run in the big race.
everybody had purchased tickets on the
owner’s horse.
they sat together and watched the
race.
the owner’s horse ran
badly, he ran
last.
some moments passed,
then the famous actor took his
stack of tickets
and tossed them down in front of the
owner.
they were spread there upon the white
tablecloth.
I no longer liked any of the movies
I had seen the famous actor
in.
I no longer liked the famous
actor.
I left the table.
I left the Director’s Room.
I took the elevator down and out of
there.
I walked across to the
grandstand area
to where the non-famous
poor people were
and they were beautiful,
they had faces like
flowers
and I stared at them,
drinking in their
voluptuous
normalness.
last call
this is it, sucker, the dead nightingale
in your lap, the final circle around
the mirage, the bones of your dreams
buried, laughter caught in the specimen
bottle, the caked blood of your
little paintings, the Hunter sighs,
the lynx huddles in the dark,
parsnip fingers grip the bottle,
old ladies mail you postcards from
Illinois,
as one fly circles the room and one room
circles the fly.
phone messages from the persistent:
old memories crushed in your brain
with hanging tongues;
the hammerhead shark dressed as a
nun;
2,000 years like a spider sucking at a
webbed insect;
the sodomized headless horse of
History;
the grandmother’s smile;
Persistent Madness Syndrome
as a spiritual occupation;
mares eating oats and oats eating me
as the fleas play tambourines;
suicide as the last serenade to the
curse of Time;
the legless spirit flung against the
wall like
a bottle of vinegar;
the cat with 3 eyes walking through
the nightmare melody;
roasted pigs that cry in the heart
of a dog
walking north;
my aunt spitting out her paperclip
soul through the open window of
a 1938 Ford driving along Colorado
Boulevard;
Brahms talking to me as I lay a
20 dollar bet on the
6 horse;
the majesty of the club-footed duck
looking for the blocked
exit;
the applause of the terrified masses;
the last torn card upside down
in the ringing of an empty
room;
the last bluebird flying from the
burning
funhouse;
an apricot seed challenging the
sun;
the sheets of the whore raised
as a flag by political
centipedes;
zero times zero times zero
times zero;
the face in your mirror is love
drowned alone;
eating an apple is eating
yourself standing on a corner;
the paperclip speaking;
an onion more beautiful than
you;
Spain in your coffee cup;
the white horse standing on
the hill;
the dream stuffed in the
trash and the trash stuffed
in
you;
the beginning and the end
are the same;
the new gods imagined and the
old gods re-invented;
the human voice being the most
ugly instrument;
the falcon swirling and the vulture
swirling and the girls dancing with
eyes so blank;
everywhere the trees and plants
and flowers watching us
as their sadness towers tall
in the mighty night;
they weep and they weep
and they
weep;
the horse running last into
snow-covered mountains
as Li Po smiles
and bitter people
tear up their paper tickets
and blame the horse
and blame the life
and blame the blame
as the mountains weep
and the cross comes down
and lifts the sun;
the great white shark sniffing
the dark purple sea
as the mouse
alone
stares through its eyes at
all the
terror;
we burn separately and
together
in the December of our
undoing;
the walking blood of our
screams unrecorded
anywhere
but in our singular
private hells;
we dance when we can
we dig for worms and
coffins
we swim
we walk
we talk
we fornicate,
we gag
we gargle
we fish and
are
fished
hooked
caught
cleaned
fried
baked
broiled
simmered
eaten
digested
expelled;
it’s a long wash
in and out of shore
through small lights and long darkness;
the bluebird
the bluebird
the bluebird
the chair in the center of the room with
nobody in
it;
everything waiting for the silver sword;
a piano playing somewhere
one small
note at a time
a bluebird on each key;
my 6 cats asleep in the other room
waiting for me;
death only means something to
death;
it’s late now
as the walls kiss me and hold me
and you
and you
and you
this terrible glory
as the Hunter himself almost wearies of
the hunt
but not
quite
not quite
not
not
quite.
the shape of the Star
well, you know, he started out as a
comedian
and then it was decided to make
him into a serious
actor,
the public always like that.
and then we decided to make him
politically aware,
we got him to pitch
all the right causes.
then Publicity sent out a story:
how he pulled a woman from a
wrecked car,
how he contributed large sums
to various charities while asking
that his name not be
revealed,
how he was going to give this
Benefit or that Benefit,
donating his time and
talent,
how he saved a child from
drowning,
how he did this and that.
we worked our asses black
and blue to create his
Public Image,
we were just starting to reap
a profit,
then, what happens?
the son of a bitch gets
drugged,
runs his Mercedes off a
cliff near Malibu
and kills
himself.
we couldn’t do much with
that one.
we claimed some communists
who disliked some of his
causes
had messed with his
brake cables.
that took pretty well
but all in all
we finally had to write him
off
as a dead loss.
we got a new one now,
found some boy
working behind a fish
counter.
Tom is perfect:
totally bland features,
even a few
freckles,
large empty eyes
and a dog-like
grin.
he’s a bit
addled,
but the clay’s all there,
we’ll shape him into
what they think they
need.
only with this one
we’re going to use a
new twist, we are going to
start him as a serious
actor
and then turn him into
a comedian.
we’re thinking all the time
here,
that’s what makes
Hollywood
what it
is.
upon reading a critical review
it’s difficult to accept
and you look around the room
for the person they are talking
about.
he’s not there
he’s not here.
he’s gone.
by the time they get your book you
are no longer your
book.
you are on the next page,
the next
book.
and worse,
they don’t even get the old books right.
you are given credit for things you don’t
deserve, for insights that aren’t
there.
people read themselves into books, altering
what they need and discarding what they
don’t.
good critics are as rare as good
writers.
and whether I get a good review or a
bad one
I take neither
seriously.
I am on the next page.
the next book.
Paris, what?
you want to get stiffed? he asked
me, well, just send something to
the Paris Review, they have
their own select crowd of boys and
girls, it’s a special club, you’ve
got to stink just right.
is that so? I sneered.
he drove off in his lambskin
Caddy
and I walked into the next
room,
looked at my 6 cats asleep
on the bed,
there was enough Power there
to crack the Universe
like a
walnut
shell.
I could taste it with the tips
of my ears,
I could see it through my
dark-stained
shorts.
the Paris Review ain’t crap
to me,
I thought.
I was at the track today and
I picked 6 out of
nine
with agony stuffed in my
pockets
and the sun
behind a film of
pain.
I took a crap, then put
on Brahms’
2nd,
sent
this
one.
a social call
to suffer the fanged indifference of the
interloper
slurping beers at your
coffeetable,
if you asked this unquestionable
bore
to leave the premises
then your wife would forever
brand you as a mean and ugly
human
and so you measure your
choices
and decide to wait out the
boor
as he lights his cigarettes and
slurps his beer
talking on and on about
absolutely nothing
as the very walls yawn
as the rugs twist in agony
as the good hours are
uselessly murdered
as you consider,
this is what it must be like in
hell.
not flames and the devil
but just some fellow
fair of heart
and good enough in his own
way
talking about the mundane
variables,
going on,
caught in the mystery of his own
voice,
slurping the beer,
lighting the cigarettes
while Time is taking the 8-count,
while Time is being mugged.
some day you will be on
your deathbed
wondering why you
wasted it
all
as you now listen and
listen and listen,
in a hell before hell,
the palaver seeping to
your marrow.
when you are unkind
to yourself
you will know no
worse.
and deserve no
better.
the girls we followed home
the girls we once followed home are
now the bag ladies,
or one of them is that white-haired
old crone who
whacked you with her
cane.
the girls we once followed home
sit on bedpans in nursing
homes,
play shuffleboard at the public
park.
they no longer dive into the
white-capped waves,
those girls we followed home,
no longer rub their bodies with oil
under the sun,
no longer primp before the
beautiful mirror,
those girls we followed home,
those girls we followed home
have gone somewhere,
some forever,
and we who followed them?
dead in wars, dead of heart
attack,
dead of yearning,
thick of shoe and slow of
speech,
our dreams are tv dreams,
the few of us,
so few of us remember
the girls we followed home.
when the sun always seemed to
be shining.
when life moved so new and
strange and wonderful
in
bright dresses.
I remember.
slow starter
by the time I got good with things
other people were into
something else.
from the worst baseball player
I became the best,
unbelievably swift in the field,
tremendous power at the
plate
but by then the others were into
schooling, books, getting ready
for the future.
from a sissy I developed into
one of the best fighters
around
but by then
there was nobody left to
fight.
the girls took me even longer.
by the time I became an
expert lover
all of my compatriots were
either married
or disillusioned by the
chase.
all that was left for me were
the leftovers, the uglies,
Betting on the Muse Page 16
