He was very bitter.
It is best to go for the eye,
smash the cornea,
blind him,
then strangle him with rope.
My mother suggested an old bathing cap
down the throat.
Not so. Not so.
Be safe. Be wise.
Tell him to seek the stars
and he will kill himself with climbing.
Tell him about Chatterton. Villon.
Make suggestions.
Take your time.
He will do it himself.
There is no hurry. Time means nothing
to you.
Goldfish
my goldfish stares with watery eyes
into the hemisphere of my sorrow;
upon the thinnest of threads
we hang together,
hang hang hang
in the hangman’s noose;
I stare into his place and
he into mine…
he must have thoughts,
can you deny this?
he has eyes and hunger
and his love too
died in January; but he is
gold, really gold, and I am grey
and it is indecent to search him out,
indecent like the burning of peaches
or the rape of children,
and I turn and look elsewhere,
but I know that he is there behind me,
one gold goblet of blood,
one thing alone
hung between the reddest cloud
of purgatory
and apt. no. 303.
god, can it be
that we are the same?
Sleep
she was a short one
getting fat and she had once been
beautiful and
she drank the wine
she drank the wine in bed and
talked and screamed and cursed at
me
and i told her
please, I need some
sleep.
—sleep? sleep? you son of a
bitch, you never sleep, you
don’t need any
sleep!
I buried her one morning early
I carried her down the sides of the Hollywood Hills
brambles and rabbits and rocks
running in front of me
and by the time I’d dug the ditch
and stuck her in
belly down
and put the dirt back on
the sun was up and it was warm
and the flies were lazy and
I could hardly see anything out of my eyes
everything was so
warm and yellow.
I managed to drive home and I got into bed and I
slept for 5 days and 4
nights.
Hello, Willie Shoemaker
the Chinaman said don’t take the hardware
and gave me a steak I couldn’t cut (except the fat)
and there was an ant circling the coffee cup;
I left a dime tip and broke out a stick of cancer,
and outside I gave an old bum who looked about
the way I felt, I gave him a quarter,
and then I went up to see the old man
strong as steel girders, fit for bombers and blondes,
up the green rotten steps that housed rats
and past the secretaries showing leg and doing nothing
and the old man sat there looking at me
through two pairs of glasses and a vacation in Paris,
and he said, Kid, I hear you been takin’ Marylou out,
and I said, just to dinner, boss,
and he said, just to dinner, eh? you couldn’t hold
that broad’s pants on with all the rivets on 5th street,
and please remember you are a shipping clerk,
I am the boss here and I pay these broads and I pay you.
yes, sir, I said, and I felt he was going to skip it
but he slid my last check across the desk
and I took it and walked out
past
all the lovely legs, the skirts pulled up to the ass,
Marylou’s ass, Ann’s ass, Vicki’s ass, all of them,
and I went down to the bar
and George said whatya gonna do now,
and I said go to Russia or Hollywood Park,
and I looked up in time to see Marylou come in,
the long thin nose, the delicate face, the lips, the legs,
the breasts, the music, the talk the love the laughing
and she said
I quit when I found out
and the bastard got down on his knees and cried
and kissed the hem of my skirt and offered me money
and I
walked out
and he blubbered like a baby.
George, I said, another drink, and I put a quarter in
the juke
and the sun came out
and I looked outside in time to see the old bum
with my quarter
and a little more luck
that had turned into a happy wine-bottle,
and a bird even flew by cheep cheep,
right there on Eastside downtown, no kidding,
and the Chinaman came in for a quickie
claiming somebody had stolen a spoon and a coffee cup
and I leaned over and bit Marylou on the ear
and the whole joint rocked with music and freedom
and I decided that Russia was too far away
and Hollywood Park just close enough.
The Literary Life
There is this long still knife somehow like a
cossack’s sword…
and C. writes that Ferlinghetti has written
a poem about Castro. well, all the boys
are doing poems on Castro now, only
Castro’s not that good
or that bad—just a small horse
in a big race.
I see this knife on the stove and I move it to
the breadboard…
after a while it is time to look around and
listen to the engines and wonder if it’s
raining; after a while writing won’t help
anymore, and drinking won’t help anymore, or
even a good piece of ass won’t.
I see this knife on the breadboard and I move it
to the sink…
this wallpaper here: how many years was it here
before I arrived?…this cigarette in my hand
it is like a thing itself, like a donkey walking
uphill…somebody took my candle and candle-
holder: a lady with red hair and a white face
standing near the closet, saying, “Can I have
this? can I really have this?”
The edge of the knife is not as sharp as it should
be…but the point, the point fascinates, the way
they grind it down like that—symmetry, real Art,
and I pick up this breadknife and walk into the
dining room…
Larsen says we mustn’t take ourselves so
seriously. Hell, I’ve been telling him that
for 8 years!
There is this full length mirror in the hall. I
can see myself in it and I look, at last.
It hasn’t rained in 175 days and it
is as quiet as a sleeping peacock. a
friend of mine shoots pool in a hall across from
the university where he teaches English, and when
he gets tired of that, he drags out a .357 magnum
and splits the rocks in half BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!
while figuring just where the word will fit real
good. In front of the mirror I cut swift circles in the
air, dividing sides of light. I am hypnotized,
uns
ettled, embarrassed. my nose is pink, my
cheeks are pink, my throat is white, the phone
rings like a wall sliding down and I answer
“Nothing, no, I’m not doing anything…”
it is a dull conversation but it is soon over. I
walk to the window and open it. the cars go by
and a bird turns on the wire and looks at me. I
think 3 centuries ahead, of myself dead that long
and life seems very odd…like a crack of
light in a buried tomb.
the bird flies away and I walk to the machine and
sit down:
Dear Willie:
I got your letter, everything fine
here…
Countryside
I drive my car
through a valley
where
(very oddly)
young girls sit on fencerails
showing impartial leg and
haunch
in butterglory sun,
young girls painting
cows and
trees in heat
painting
old farms that sit like
pools of impossibility
on unplanted ground,
ground as still and insane
as the weathervanes
stuck northwest
in the degenerate air;
I drive on
with the girls and their brushes and
their taffy bodies stuck inside my
head like
toothache,
and I get out
much farther down the road
walk into a peeling white cafe
and am handed water in a glass as
thick as a
lip, and
4 people sit
eating,
eyes obsessed with molecules of no
urgency;
I order a veal cutlet and the
waitress walks away
trussed in white flat linen
and I sit and watch and wait
so disattached I wish I could
cry or curse or break the water glass;
instead I pour cream into the
coffee
I think of the girls and the cows,
stir the cream with a damaged and
apologetic
tinkle
then decide
not to think or feel anymore
that day.
Death Wants More Death
death wants more death, and its webs are full:
I remember my father’s garage, how child-like
I would brush the corpses of flies
from the windows they had thought were escape—
their sticky, ugly, vibrant bodies
shouting like dumb crazy dogs against the glass
only to spin and flit
in that second larger than hell or heaven
onto the edge of the ledge,
and then the spider from his dank hole
nervous and exposed
the puff of body swelling
hanging there
not really quite knowing,
and then knowing—
something sending it down its string,
the wet web,
toward the weak shield of buzzing,
the pulsing;
a last desperate moving hair-leg
there against the glass
there alive in the sun,
spun in white;
and almost like love:
the closing over,
the first hushed spider-sucking:
filling its sack
upon this thing that lived;
crouching there upon its back
drawing its certain blood
as the world goes by outside
and my temples scream
and I hurl the broom against them:
the spider dull with spider-anger
still thinking of its prey
and waving an amazed broken leg;
the fly very still,
a dirty speck stranded to straw;
I shake the killer loose
and he walks lame and peeved
towards some dark corner
but I intercept his dawdling
his crawling like some broken hero,
and the straws smash his legs
now waving
above his head
and looking
looking for the enemy
and somehow valiant,
dying without apparent pain
simply crawling backward
piece by piece
leaving nothing there
until at last the red gut-sack splashes
its secrets,
and I run child-like
with God’s anger a step behind,
back to simple sunlight,
wondering
as the world goes by
with curled smile
if anyone else
saw or sensed my crime.
Eat
talking of death
is like talking of
money—
we neither know the
price or the
worth,
yet looking down at my hands
I can guess
a little.
man’s made for guessing and for
failure
and woman
for the rest.
when the time comes
I hope I can remember
eating a pear.
we are sick now
with so many dead
dogs
skulls
armies
flowers
continents.
there is a fight—
this is it:
against the mechanics
of the thing.
eat a good pear today
so tomorrow
you can
remember
it.
10 Lions and the End of the World
in a national magazine of repute
(yes, I was reading it)
I saw a photograph of lions
crossing a street
in some village
and taking their time;
that’s the way
it should be
and some day when
they turn out the lights
and the whole thing’s over,
I’ll be sitting here
in the chalky smoke
thinking of those 10 damned
(yes, I counted them)
lions
blocking traffic
while the roses bloomed.
we all ought to
do that
now
while there’s
t
i
m
e.
The Blackbirds Are Rough Today
lonely as a dry and used orchard
spread over the earth
for use and surrender.
shot down like an ex-pug selling
dailies on the corner.
taken by tears like
an aging chorus girl
who has gotten her last check.
a hanky is in order your lord your
worship.
the blackbirds are rough today
like
ingrown toenails
in an overnight
jail—
wine wine whine,
the blackbirds run around and
fly around
harping about
Spanish melodies and bones.
and everywhere is
nowhere—
the dream is as bad as
flapjacks and flat tires:
why do we go on
with our minds and
pockets full of
dust
like a bad boy just out of
school—
you tell
<
br /> me,
you who were a hero in some
revolution
you who teach children
you who drink with calmness
you who own large homes
and walk in gardens
you who have killed a man and own a
beautiful wife
you tell me
why I am on fire like old dry
garbage.
we might surely have some interesting
correspondence.
it will keep the mailman busy.
and the butterflies and ants and bridges and
cemeteries
the rocket-makers and dogs and garage mechanics
will still go on a
while
until we run out of stamps
and/or
ideas.
don’t be ashamed of
anything; I guess God meant it all
like
locks on
doors.
A Word on the Quick and Modern Poem-Makers
it is quite easy to appear modern
while in reality being the biggest damnfool
ever born;
I know: I have gotten away with some awful stuff
but not nearly such awful pot as I read in the journals;
I have an honesty self-born of whores and hospitals
that will not allow me to pretend to be
something which I am not—
which is a double failure: the failure of people
in poetry
and the failure of people
in life.
and when you fail in poetry
you fail life,
The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966 Page 6
