What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire
Page 5
pig-stabbed them out of the dream
and the women had no chance
especially the young ones
we bared them neatly
screaming
we violated them in every way
beat the soul out of them
killed some
cut the nipples off others
then we ate all the meat and drank all
the booze in town.
war was good so long
as
you won.
when we marched out
singing
there was nothing left
back there
but fire and smoke
and death
and marching over the hill
at sunrise
the flowers rewarded us
with their
beauty.
more argument
Rilke, she said, don’t you love
Rilke?
no, I said, he bores me,
poets bore me, they are shits, snails, snippets of
dust in a cheap wind.
Lorca, she said, how about Lorca?
Lorca was good when he was good. he knew how to
sing, but the only reason you like him
is because he was murdered.
Shelley, then, she said, how about Shelley?
didn’t he drown in a rowboat?
then how about the lovers? I forget their names…
the two Frenchmen, one killed the
other…
o great, I said, now tell me about
Oscar Wilde.
a great man, she said.
he was clever, I said, but you believe in all these things
for the wrong reason.
Van Gogh, then, she said.
there you go, I said, there you go again.
what do you mean?
I mean that what the other painters of the time said was true:
he was an average painter.
how do you know?
I know because I paid $10 to go in and see some of his
paintings. I saw that he was interesting,
honorable, but not great.
how can you say, she asked, all these things about all these people?
you mean, why don’t I agree with you?
for a man who is almost starving to death, you talk like some
god-damned sage!
but, I said, haven’t all your heroes starved?
but this is different; you dislike everything that I like.
no, I said, I just don’t like the way you
like them.
I’m leaving, she said.
I could have lied to you, I said, like most
do.
you mean men lie to me?
yes, to get at what you think is holy.
you mean, it’s not holy?
I don’t know, but I won’t lie
to make it work.
be damned with you then, she said.
good night, I said.
she really slammed that door.
I got up and turned on the radio.
there was some pianist playing that same work by
Grieg. nothing changed. nothing
ever changed.
nothing.
wind the clock
it’s just a slow day moving into a slow night.
it doesn’t matter what you do
everything just stays the same.
the cats sleep it off, the dogs don’t
bark,
it’s just a slow day moving into a slow night.
there’s nothing even dying,
it’s just more waiting through a slow day moving
into a slow night.
you don’t even hear the water running,
the walls just stand there
and the doors don’t open.
it’s just a slow day moving into a slow night.
the rain has stopped,
you can’t hear a siren anywhere,
your wristwatch has a dead battery,
the cigarette lighter is out of fluid,
it’s just a slow day moving into a slow night,
it’s just more waiting through a slow day moving
into a slow night
like tomorrow’s never going to come
and when it does
it’ll be the same damn thing.
what?
sleepy now
at 4 a.m.
I hear the siren
of a white
ambulance,
then a dog
barks
once
in this tough-boy
Christmas
morning.
she comes from somewhere
probably from the bellybutton or from the shoe under the
bed, or maybe from the mouth of the shark or from
the car crash on the avenue that leaves blood and memories
scattered on the grass.
she comes from love gone wrong under an
asphalt moon.
she comes from screams stuffed with cotton.
she comes from hands without arms
and arms without bodies
and bodies without hearts.
she comes out of cannons and shotguns and old victrolas.
she comes from parasites with blue eyes and soft voices.
she comes out from under the organ like a roach.
she keeps coming.
she’s inside of sardine cans and letters.
she’s under your fingernails pressing blue and flat.
she’s the signpost on the barricade
smeared in brown.
she’s the toy soldiers inside your head
poking their lead bayonets.
she’s the first kiss and the last kiss and
the dog’s guts spilling like a river.
she comes from somewhere and she never stops
coming.
me, and that
old woman:
sorrow.
lifedance
the area dividing the brain and the soul
is affected in many ways by
experience—
some lose all mind and become soul:
insane.
some lose all soul and become mind:
intellectual.
some lose both and become:
accepted.
the bells
soon after Kennedy was shot
I heard this ringing of bells
an electrically charged ringing of bells
and I thought, it can’t be the church
on the corner
too many people there
hated Kennedy.
I liked him
and walked to the window
thinking, well, maybe everybody is tired of
cowardly gunmen,
maybe the Russian Orthodox Church
up the street
is saying this
with their bells?
but the sound got nearer and nearer
and approached very slowly,
and I thought, what is it?
it was coming right up to my window
and then I saw it:
a small square vehicle
powered by a tiny motor
coming 2 m.p.h.
up the street:
KNIVES SHARPENED
was scrawled in red crayon
on the plywood sides
and inside sat an old man
looking straight ahead.
the ladies did not come out with their knives
the ladies were liberated and sharpened their own
knives.
the plywood box
crept down the lonely street
and with much seeming agony
managed to turn right at Normandie Blvd.
and vanish.
my own knives were dull
and I was not liberated
and
there certainly would be more
cowardly gunmen.
much later I thought
I could still hear the
bells.
full moon
red flower of love
cut at the stem
passion has its own
way
and hatred too.
the curtain blows open
and the sky is black
out there tonight.
across the way
a man and a woman
standing up against a darkened
wall,
the red moon
whirls,
a mouse runs along
the windowsill
changing colors.
I am alone in torn levis
and a white sweat shirt.
she’s with her man now
in the shadow of that wall
and as he enters her
I draw upon my
cigarette.
everywhere, everywhere
amazing, how grimly we hold onto our
misery,
ever defensive, thwarted by
the forces.
amazing, the energy we burn
fueling our anger.
amazing, how one moment we can be
snarling like a beast, then
a few moments later,
forgetting what or
why.
not hours of this or days or
months or years of this
but decades,
lifetimes
completely used up,
given over
to the pettiest
rancor and
hatred.
finally
there is nothing here for death to
take
away.
about a trip to Spain
in New York in those days they had
a system at the track
where you bought a ticket
and tried to pick 5 winners in a row
and Harry took $1000
and went up to the window and said,
“1, 8, 3, 7, 5.”
and that’s the way they came in
and so he took his wife to Spain
with all that money
and his wife fell for the mayor of this little
village in Spain and fucked him
and the marriage was over
and Harry came back to Brooklyn broke
and mutilated
and he has been a little crazy ever
since, but
Harry, don’t despair
for you are a genius
for who else had enough pure faith
and enough courage
to go up to the window
and against all the gods of logic
say to the man at the window:
“1, 8, 3, 7, 5”?
you did it.
yes, she got the mayor
but you’re the real winner
forever.
Van Gogh
vain vanilla ladies strutting
while Van Gogh did it to
himself.
girls pulling on silk
hose
while Van Gogh did it to
himself
in the field
unkissed, and
worse.
I pass him on the street:
“how’s it going, Van?”
“I dunno, man,” he says
and walks on.
there is a blast of color:
one more creature
dizzy with love.
he said,
then,
I want to leave.
and they look at his paintings
and love him
now.
for that kind of love
he did the right
thing
as for the other kind of love
it never arrived.
Vallejo
it is hard to find a man
whose poems do not
finally disappoint you.
Vallejo has never disappointed
me in that way.
some say he finally starved to
death.
however
his poems about the terror of being
alone
are somehow gentle and
do not
scream.
we are all tired of most
art.
Vallejo writes as a man
and not as an
artist.
he is beyond
our understanding.
I like to think of Vallejo still
alive
and walking across a
room, I find
the sound of Cesar Vallejo’s
steadfast tread
imponderable.
when the violets roar at the sun
they’ve got us in the cage
ruined of grace and senses
and the heart roars like a lion
at what they’ve done to us.
the professionals
constipated writers
squatting over their machines
on hot nights
while their wives talk on the
telephone.
while the TV plays
in the background
they squat over their machines
they light cigarettes
and hope for fame
and
beautiful young girls
or at least
something to write
about.
“yeah, Barney, he’s still at the typer.
I can’t disturb him.
he’s working on a series of short novels for
Pinnacle magazine. his central character is some
guy he calls ‘Bugblast.’ I got a sunburn
today. I was reading a magazine in the yard
and I forgot how long I was out there…”
endless hot summer nights.
the blades of the fan tap and rattle
against the wire cage.
the air doesn’t move.
it’s hard to breathe.
the people out there expect miracles
continual miracles with
words.
the world is full of
constipated writers.
and eager readers who need plenty of new
shit.
it’s depressing.
the 8 count concerto
the lid to the great jar
opens
and out tumbles a
Christ child.
I throw it to my cat
who bats it about in the
air
but he soon tires of
the lack of
response.
it is near the end of
February in a
so far
banal year.
not a damn good war
in sight anywhere.
I light an Italian cigar,
it’s slim, tastes bitter.
I inhale the space between
continents,
stretch my legs.
it’s moments like
this—you can feel it
happening—that you grow
transformed
partly into something
else strange and
unnameable—
so when death comes
it can only take
part of
you.
I exhale a perfect
smoke ring
as a soprano sings to me
through the radio.
each night counts for something
or else we’d all
go mad.
an afternoon in February
many of the paperboys here in L.A.
are starting to grow
beards.
this makes them look suspiciously like bad
poets.
a paper container in front of me
says:
Martin Van Buren was the 8th president
of the U.S. from 1837 to 1841,
as I spill coffee on my new
dictionary.
the phone rings.
it is a woman who wants to talk to me.
can’t they forget me?
am I that good?
the lady downstairs borrows a vacuum cleaner
from the manager and cackles her thanks.
her thanks drift up to me here
and disappear as two pigeons arrive
and sit on the roof in the
wind. vacuum is spelled very strangely,
I think, as I watch the 2 pigeons on the roof.
they sit motionless in the wind, just a few small
feathers on their bodies
lifting and falling.
the phone rings again.
“I have just about gotten over it,
I have just about gotten over
you.”
“thank you,” I say and
hang up.
it is 2 in the afternoon
I have finished my coffee and had a smoke
and now the coffee water is boiling
again. there is an original painting by
Eric Heckel
on my north wall
but there is neither joy nor sorrow here now
only the paperboys
trying to grow beards
the pigeons in the wind
and the faint sound of the vacuum cleaner.
crickets
sound of doom like an approaching
cyclone
the woman across the way