and I’m red, all red inside,
punctured with heart and intestine and lung,
I hope they don’t arrest me,
I practice pretty good
and I’ve got a steak, a cigar
and a fifth of scotch,
I’ve read most of the classics
and I watch the birds fly this morning
and I can see most of them,
many of them that you can’t see,
and I’m going to take a bath pretty soon,
put on some clean clothes
and drive South to the track.
it is not an unusual morning except that
it is one more,
and I want to thank you
for listening.
I Kneel
these legs need to run
but I kneel
before female flowers
catch the scent of
forgetfulness
and grab it
sure
and evenings
hours of evenings
grey-headed evenings
nod
and afterwards
fall asleep.
Freedom: The Unmolested Eagle of Myself
justification of blood and rock is
justification of you
waiting in the doorway
justification of gun and club and pincers is
justification of you
spreading a tablecloth
the tree’s mathematics is the pounding dull leaves of
your eyes
my feet pushed into socks is an Arab crawling up to
kill
juice of christ in a pear is myself driving away
at 90 miles an hour
and
the flak and the gruel and the words are riveted to the
walls
they are
packaged like bombs to explode under my
enemies
and the evening comes down smiling and humming one
more dead tune
and
it’s hooray: look out: wait:
starve and be covered by dirt until
life is tall and silver
again.
Singing Is Fire
the birds are on fire
now
out there
and I walk across the room
and hold back the shade
and they are out there now
burning at
5:05 a.m.—darkness lifting like a
horse falling through sand. well,
I’ve got a blazer of whiskey left and
there are enough stretchers to carry the dead
but
not enough water to save the burning
birds: and they are telling me now:
FLAME! FLAME!
FLAME!
as old trains move through the
desert
as the whores sleep with the job
done
as the schoolboys dream of laborless
love
the birds BURN and
die before me—
they
fly away done
leaving the grass for what’s left of the
worms what’s left of the worms
what’s left of them
for what’s left of me:
old tin song with lunatic tears:
which
is nothing new
except it’s different now
feeling so bad
they used to call it the blues
but it’s not so bad
whatever you call it
because at this time of light
say 5:36 a.m.
I still have a little whiskey left and
therefore a
chance.
The Sun Wields Mercy
and the sun wields mercy
but like a torch carried too high,
and the jets whip across its sight
and rockets leap like toads,
and the boys get out the maps
and pin-cushion the moon,
old green cheese,
no life there but too much on earth:
our unwashed India boys
crossing their legs, playing pipes,
starving with sucked-in bellies,
watching the snakes volute
like beautiful women in the hungry air;
the rockets leap,
the rockets leap like hares,
clearing clump and dog
replacing out-dated bullets;
the Chinese still carve
in jade, quietly stuffing rice
into their hunger, a hunger
a thousand years old,
their muddy rivers moving with fire
and song, barges, houseboats
pushed by the drifting poles
of waiting without wanting;
in Turkey they face the East
on their carpets
praying to a purple god
who smokes and laughs
and sticks his fingers in their eyes
blinding them, as gods will do;
but the rockets are ready: peace is no longer,
for some reason, precious;
madness drifts like lily pads
on a pond, circling senselessly;
the painters paint dipping
their reds and greens and yellows,
poets rhyme their loneliness,
musicians starve as always
and the novelists miss the mark,
but not the pelican, the gull;
pelicans dip and dive, rise,
shaking shocked half-dead
radioactive fish from their beaks;
indeed, indeed, the waters wash
the rocks with slime; and on Wall St.
the market staggers like a lost drunk
looking for his key; ah,
this will be a good one, by God:
it will take us back to the
snake, the limpet, or if we’re lucky,
the catalysis to the
sabre-teeth, the winged monkey
scrabbling in the pit over bits
of helmet, instrument and glass;
a lightning crashes across
the window and in a million rooms
lovers lie entwined and lost
and sick as peace;
the sky still breaks red and orange for the
painters—and for the lovers,
flowers open as they have always
opened but covered with the thin dust
of rocket fuel and mushrooms,
poison mushrooms; it’s a bad time,
a dog-sick time—curtain,
act III, standing room only,
SOLD OUT, SOLD OUT, SOLD OUT again,
by god, by somebody and something,
by rockets and generals and
leaders, by poets, doctors, comedians,
by manufacturers of soup
and biscuits, Janus-faced hucksters
of their own indexterity;
I can see now the coal-slick
contaminated fields, a snail or 2,
bile, obsidian, a fish or 3
in the shallows, an obloquy of our
source and our sight…
has this happened before? is history
a circle that catches itself by the tail,
a dream, a nightmare,
a general’s dream, a president’s dream,
a dictator’s dream…
can’t we awaken?
or are the forces of life greater than we?
can’t we awaken? must we forever,
dear friends, die in our sleep?
On the Failure of a Poet
pinch-penny light, rifted, pitied light
like the drunken face of God in the sand,
smiling forgiveness…some old candle burning
in some old house
on the last nigh
t of earth,
house burning,
earth burning
in tears and poetry
scorching the filthy stars.
stalwart death, clean-up batter,
picking his nose and his victims,
old buddy, chewing stale bread,
always successful
as I listen to the crickets
while the master poets snore,
as I bring up the walls of China
in my poor brain
and walk them in wet dark
dropping lilies into ponds
calling to the dead
who have crawled away to hide;
while the master poets snore
I pay homage to bombs
the face of Baune turning to blood
with only the eyes holding still to the edge of sunset,
not wanting to go down…
now I cling evilly to these walls
and stand before a mirror
examining my content:
I represent rent, cheap labor
and nickle-coffee nights,
dancer in the splendid hock-shops
and rooms that close across the throat
as words fly from my small white hands
as the master poets snore…
are their birds more silken than mine?
perhaps, perhaps…it is so hard to deny!
what trick hikes their wings?
I tell you, no sparrow is more carved or
craving than mine…and yet
across my window
no voice answers, nothing responds;
I hear only the electric voices,
the shuffling of plates and lives,
on and on
these same simple dead sounds
enfolding me in their unchallenged weight,
while the master poets sing
and are praised,
and even fools love and are loved;
faith burns away:
I am a beggar hoisting lulled
sacked thoughts,
knowing I have the bolt to throw
but the catcher’s out of sight.
The Beast
Beowulf may have killed Grendel and
Grendel’s mother
but he
couldn’t kill this
one:
it moves around with broken back and
eyes of spittle
has cancer
sweeps with a broom
smiles and kills
germs germans gladiolas
it sits in the bathtub
with a piece of soap and
reads the newspaper about the
Bomb and Vietnam and the freeways
and it smiles and then
gets out naked
doesn’t use a towel
goes outside
and rapes young girls
kills them and
throws them aside like
steakbone
it walks into a bedroom and watches
lovers fuck
it stops the clock at
1:30 a.m.
it turns a man into a rock while he
reads a book
the beast
spoils candy
causes mournful songs to be
created
makes birds stop
flying
it even killed Beowulf
the brave Beowulf who
had killed Grendel and Grendel’s
mother
look
even the whores at the bar
think about it
drink too much and
almost
forget business.
A Rat Rises
in some suburban cellar
a rat rises and tongues the leaky bottom of your life;
dreams of Cairo leave the body first,
such a November!—sweet pain tickling
like a fly, brushed off, it circles back
and settles again…
I will not lie: I hear the cackle of the grave
on nights that cannot be drunk away,
and it has rained all this same day
and buying my paper
I saw the drops falling
from the newsboy’s hat
to his nose
and then falling from his nose…
but I doubt he ever considered
cutting his throat,
ending a quick love.
Ramsey, says a voice on the phone,
Ramsey, you sound so damned sad!
downstairs a child draws circles in the mud,
it has stopped raining.
circles, circles
weep less, wonder less.
I hear a voice singing.
I open a window.
a dog barks.
in Amsterdam a holy man trembles.
Pansies
pansies in a glass
this is sterile
sterile meaning
less trouble,
the arms of color
lifting
like cobras,
everything standing
around the glass
in the room.
I am thinking
of the
bee.
The Man with the Hot Nose
I am stuck with a snarl,
by God,
that would walk up the side
of a house;
I snarl, kissing maidens,
50-year-old whores
and torn-up mutuel
tickets;
all affected, I think,
as the motorcycle cop
writes out his ticket
and I think of myself
killing him,
laying him in the sunlight
badge upwards
for butterflies
and stares;
I snarl when I shit
or read the
stock market quotations;
I snarl when it rains,
I am almost depraved,
seldom laugh,
misunderstand flat tires
and various things
such as
human decay of mind and
body, spiders at
work,
all the dead troops of
forever,
toy crosses for sale
in stationery store
windows,
elephants for sale
or thirsty,
riot for useless
causes; stuck elevators,
constipation,
I understand nothing
except maybe
falling off a couch
drunk;
ariel ariel by God,
the clown’s tin sides
thumping,
I bring the cigarette
close,
light it,
not setting my hair
on fire
(I guess this is
important);
I snarl a bit
in case there is Anybody
on the stairway,
on the roof,
on the mountain,
pissing from the tower of
Pisa (which must be
leaned back a bit
for ten million dollars)
and looking.
Hangover and Sick Leave
I know very little
and while I have eyes inside my head,
and feet to walk with, and
there are universities and
books full of men and
places like
Rome and Madrid—
I stay in bed
and watch the light rise in the curtains
and listen to the sounds
that I dislike, and
I fear the angry wife
the landlord
the psychiatrist
the police
the priest,
yet in bed h
ere
the sun of myself working around my
bones
I am real enough
while
thinking of the factory workers with
sweating crotches
I know enough
of Los Angeles
in this room
so that there is nothing to
prove
and I raise the covers
to the ears of my empty head
and breathe in and out
in and out
within these walls
the beautiful cardboard day of
the mole.
Mercy, Wherever You Are, Come Running in to Me and Grab Me in Your Good Arms—
sterile faces squeezed out from squalid tubes of
bodies ream and blind me to any
compromise.
I would crawl down into the black volcanic gut of a
chicken and
hide hide hide.
listen, I know you think I am bitter and
maybe insane, well
that’s all right
but find me a place:
a doorman at the casino
where I may separate the drunks from their
florins
or let the air out of the tires of the
mayor
until the years pass by and they
burn the world
until the difference in faces is
indifferent.
or now look
while I’m asking for things
I’d like to tell you
this:
I would like a piece of ass
I have always wanted a piece of ass
most of the
time.
I mean good
stuff not like what
I’ve been
getting.
I want all
silk and garters and flesh and
snake wriggle and the
diamond earrings and the
accent, and the smell of
small cotton
animals.
I don’t ask for a field of flowers in a
coal mine.
The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966 Page 10
