his children leave with
him.
she comes back to bed
and I stretch a leg out
place it against hers.
I was young once too.
human relationships simply aren’t
durable.
I think back to the women in
my life.
they seem non-existent.
“did he get his drill?” I ask.
“yes, he got his drill.”
I wonder if I’ll ever have to come
back for my bermuda
shorts and my record album
by The Academy of St. Martin in the
Fields? I suppose I
will.
40,000 flies
torn by a temporary wind
we come back together again
check walls and ceilings for cracks and
the eternal spiders
wonder if there will be one more
woman
now
40,000 flies running the arms of my
soul
singing
I met a million dollar baby in a
5 and 10 cent
store
arms of my soul?
flies?
singing?
what kind of shit is
this?
it’s so easy to be a poet
and so hard to be
a man.
the strangest thing
I was sitting in a chair
in the dark
when horrible sounds of torture
and fear
began in the brush
outside of my window.
it was obviously not a male cat
and a female cat
but a male and a male
and from the sound
one appeared to be much larger
and was attacking with the intent to
kill.
then it stopped.
then it began again
worse this time;
the sounds were so terrible
that I was unable to
move.
then the sounds stopped.
I got up from my chair
went to bed and
slept.
I had a dream. this small grey and white
cat came to me in my dream
and it was very
sad. it spoke to me,
it said:
“look what the other cat did to me.”
and it rested in my lap
and I saw the slashes and
the raw flesh. then it
jumped off my lap.
then that was all.
I awakened at 8:45 p.m.
put on my clothes and walked outside
and looked around.
there was nothing
there.
I walked back inside and
dropped two eggs
into a pot of water
and turned up the
flame.
the paper on the floor
…the drawing is poor and I know little of the plot:
a man with a stable, world-earned face and the necktie of
respectability, and a satisfied pipe; and his wife—
signified by the quick ink of black hair (just ever so
tousled with having babies and guiding them safely through
the falls): there is a grandmother who sits somewhat like
a flowerpot: allotted an earned space but not really
useful; and a couple of smiling, knee-climbing gamins
two little Jung and Adlers
full of moot, black-type questions,
and, of course,
a young girl troubled with young loves
(they take these things so much more seriously than the
young men who
go behind the barn);
and there is a young man—her, I presume barn-wise, brother
with this great tundra, this shield of black hair;
he is horribly healthy
and dressed in the latest in sport shirts
in the best barn-wise manner;
this big…brother (16? 17? 18? God wot?)
is usually (when I read this, which is not very often)
leaning forward over the car seat
(he sits in the back, like the author)
and makes some…comment on LIFE, capital all-the-way LIFE
that is so VERY true
that it just…upsets everybody
except the poor kiddies who don’t know what the hell it’s
all about in spite of their Jung and Adler
and they just ride along round-eyed and sucking at their
lollypops all up in the pretty pure white clouds;
but, lo, the headman grinds his pipe grey-faced against this
sporty truth that old men let lie like overgrown
gas-meter covers; and the mother (wife wot?) draws down
a long black eyebrow and one more strand of hair becomes
unattached in the cool long struggle; and
Grandma, oh, I don’t know—
by then I have looked away; but I remember the girl,
the young girl with young loves
is always especially angry
because the back of the barn has been blamed on her…
locked with René the Frenchman, the struggling…painter or
wot?
nobody wants to face it but this…fat…sports-wear shirt
character (who is really a nice strong boy who will really
be O.K. some day) keeps bringing the cow out from behind the
barn
with the bull; but he is young
and laughs
and all somehow bear up;
but best is his…explanation of it all,
of the cow and the bull,
with the inherent and instinctive…wiseness of his
youth;
the explanation usually comes in the morning
over the breakfast table—
before all this sickly struggling ordinary mess of common…
humanity has had a chance
to seat itself
the healthy white…face laughs and tells it all;
he’s been sitting there waiting to tell it all,
he’s been sitting there with the little…twins (or wot?)
as they spill porridge so cutely with their little spoons,
this big…happy oaf who’s never had a toothache
has been sitting waiting the entrance of his elders
(Granny who must put in her teeth, and Papa who is worried
about the office, and Mama who isn’t exactly straightened out
yet; and the young girl who loves with faith, anger and…
purity) in they come
and he throws out an arm
and tilting his healthy…carcass madly back in the chair
before the sun-pure kitchen curtains
and the little lovable, struggling bungling group
he says his great say,
and in the balloon above his head are the words
and by the twisted agony of the faces
I am led to believe something has been said,
but I read again
looking carefully at the great happy spewing oaf’s face
the brown great deepness of the eyes
and the young girl’s teeth pushed out sour as if she had
bitten into some lemon of truth,
but there is something wrong
there is some mistake
because the sheet of paper I hold
slants and angles in the electric light
into the open dizziness of my dome
and it huddles and curls itself into a puffy knot
and pushes at the back of my eyes
and pulls my nerves taut-thin from toe to hair-line
and I know then that
the grea
t spewing oaf has said
nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing
nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing
nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing
and now,
on the rug
under the chair
I can see the comic section
folded in half,
I can see the black and white lines
and some faces I don’t care to discern;
but a thin illness overcomes me
at the sight of this portion of paper
and I look away
and try not to think
that much of our living life
is true to the little paper faces
that stare up from our feet
and grin and jump and gesture,
to be wrapped in tomorrow’s garbage
and thrown away.
2 flies
The flies are angry bits of
life;
why are they so angry?
it seems they want more,
it seems almost as if they
are angry
that they are flies;
it is not my fault;
I sit in the room
with them
and they taunt me
with their agony;
it is as if they were
loose chunks of soul
left out of somewhere;
I try to read a paper
but they will not let me
be;
one seems to go in half-circles
high along the wall,
throwing a miserable sound
upon my head;
the other one, the smaller one
stays near and teases my hand,
saying nothing,
rising, dropping
crawling near;
what god puts these
lost things upon me?
other men suffer dictates of
empire, tragic love…
I suffer
insects…
I wave at the little one
which only seems to revive
his impulse to challenge:
he circles swifter,
nearer, even making
a fly-sound,
and one above
catching a sense of the new
whirling, he too, in excitement,
speeds his flight,
drops down suddenly
in a cuff of noise
and they join
in circling my hand,
strumming the base
of the lampshade
until some man-thing
in me
will take no more
unholiness
and I strike
with the rolled-up paper—
missing!—
striking,
striking,
they break in discord,
some message lost between them,
and I get the big one
first, and he kicks on his back
flicking his legs
like an angry whore,
and I come down again
with my paper club
and he is a smear
of fly-ugliness;
the little one circles high
now, quiet and swift,
almost invisible;
he does not come near
my hand again;
he is tamed and
inaccessible; I leave
him be, he leaves me
be;
the paper, of course,
is ruined;
something has happened,
something has soiled my
day,
sometimes it does not
take a man
or a woman,
only something alive;
I sit and watch
the small one;
we are woven together
in the air
and the living;
it is late
for both of us.
through the streets of anywhere
of course it is nonsense to try to patch up an
old poem while drinking a warm beer
on a Sunday afternoon; it is better to simply
exist through the end of a cigarette;
the people are listless and although this is a
poor term of description
Gershwin is on the radio
banging and praying to get out;
I have read the newspapers,
carefully noting the suicides,
I have also carefully noted
the green of some tree
like a nature poet on his last cup,
and
bang bang
there they go outside;
new children, some of them getting ready
to sit here, and do as I am doing—
warm beer, dead Gershwin,
getting fat around the middle,
disbelieving the starving years,
Atlanta frozen like God’s head
holding an apple in the window,
but we are all finally tricked and
slapped to death
like lovers’ vows, bargained
out of any gain,
and the radio is finished
and the phone rings and a female says,
“I am free tonight;” well, she is not much
but I am not much either;
in adolescent fire I once thought I could ride
a horse through the streets of anywhere,
but they quickly shot this horse from under,
“Ya got cigarettes?” she asks. “Yes,” I say,
“I got cigarettes.” “Matches?” she asks.
“Enough matches to burn Rome.” “Whiskey?”
“Enough whiskey for a Mississippi River
of pain.” “You drunk?” “Not yet.”
She’ll be over: perfect: a fig
leaf and a small club, and
I look at the poem I am trying to work with:
I say that
the backalleys will arrive upon
the bloodyapes
as noon arrives upon the Salinas
fieldhands….
bullshit. I rip the page once, twice,
three times, then check for matches and
icecubes, hot and cold,
with some men their conversation is better than
their creation
and with other men
it’s a woman
almost any woman
that is their Rodin among park benches;
bird down in road awaiting rats and wheels
I know that I have deserted you,
the icecubes pile like fool’s gold
in the pitcher
and now they are playing
Alex Scriabin
which is a little better
but not much
for me.
fire station
(For Jane, with love)
we came out of the bar
because we were out of money
but we had a couple of wine bottles
in the room.
it was about 4 in the afternoon
and we passed a fire station
and she started to go
crazy:
“a FIRE STATION! oh, I just love
FIRE engines, they’re so red and
all! let’s go in!”
I followed her on
in. “FIRE ENGINES!” she screamed
wobbling her big
ass.
she was already trying to climb into
one, pulling her skirt up to her
waist, trying to jacknife up into the
seat.
“here, here, lemme help ya!” a fireman ran
up.
another fireman walked up to
me: “our citizens are always welcome,”
he to
ld
me.
the other guy was up in the seat with
her. “you got one of those big THINGS?”
she asked him. “oh, hahaha!, I mean one of
those big HELMETS!”
“I’ve got a big helmet too,” he told
her.
“oh, hahaha!”
“you play cards?” I asked my
fireman. I had 43 cents and nothing but
Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit Page 2
