and
all during the night as I have been drinking and typing these
eleven or twelve poems
the lights have gone off and on
there is a wild wind outside
and in between times
I have sat in the dark here
electric (haha) typer off lights out radio off
drinking in the dark
lighting cigarettes in the dark
there was fire off the match
we are all burning together
burning brothers and sisters
I like it I like it I like
it.
late late late poem
you think about the time in
Malibu
after taking the tall girl
to dinner and drinks
you came out to the Volks
and the clutch was
gone
(no Auto Club card)
nothing out there but the
ocean and
25 miles to your
room
(her suitcase there
after an air trip from somewhere
in Texas)
and you say to her, “well,
maybe we’ll swim back in,” and
she forgets to
smile.
and the problem with
writing these poems
as you get into number 7 or
8 or 9
into the second bottle near
3 a.m.
trying to light your
cigarette with a book of
stamps
after already setting the
wastebasket on fire
once
is
that there is still some
adventure and joy
in typing
as the radio roars its
classical music
but the content
begins to get
thin.
3 a.m. games:
the worst thing is
being drunk
all the lighters gone
dumb
matchbooks
empty
cigarette and cigar stubs
all about
you find a small pack of
matches
with 3 paper
matches
but the matches go
limp against the worn match
cover
shit:
drink without smoke is like
cock without
pussy
you drink some
more
search about
find one paper match of
happiness
carefully scratch it
against the least-worn
empty match
pack
it flares!
you’ve got your
smoke!
you light
up
you flick the match
toward a
tray
it misses
and
like that…
a flame rises
everything is BURNING
at last!
: an American Express customer
receipt
: some of the empty match
books
: even one of the dead
lighters
the flame whirls and
leaps
then the whole ashtray of
cigarette and cigar stubs
begins to smoke
as if mouths were inhaling
them
you battle the flames with
various and sundry objects
including your
hands
until finally the flame is
gone and there is nothing but
smoke
as again you get that
re-occurring thought: I must be
crazy.
you hear your wife’s
voice:
“Hank, are you all
right?”
she’s on the other side of
the wall in the
bedroom
“oh, I’m fine…”
“I smell smoke…is the house burning
down?”
“just a small fire, Linda…I got
it…go to sleep…”
she is the one who got you
the steel wastebasket
after a similar
occurrence
soon she is asleep
again
and you’re searching
for more
matches.
someday I’m going to write a primer for crippled saints but meanwhile…
as the Bomb sits out there in the hands of a
diminishing species
all you want
is me sitting next to you
with popcorn and Dr. Pepper
as those dull celluloid teeth
chew away at
my remains.
I don’t worry too much about the
Bomb—the madhouses are full
enough
and I always remember
after one of the best pieces of ass
I ever had
I went to the bathroom and
masturbated—hard to kill a man
like that with a
Bomb?
anyhow, I’ve finally shaken
R. Jeffers and Celine from my
belltower
and I sit there alone
with you and
Dostoevsky
as the real and the
artificial heart
continues to
falter,
famished…
I love you but
don’t know what to
do.
help wanted
I was a crazed young man and then found this book written by a
crazed older man and I felt better because he was
able to write it down
and then I found a later book by this same crazed older
man
only to me
he seemed no longer crazed he just appeared to be
dull—
we all hold up well for a while, then inherent with flaws and
skips and misses
most of us
so often deteriorate overnight
into a state so near defecation
that the end result is almost unbearable to the
senses.
luckily, I found a few other crazed men who almost remained that
way until they
died.
that’s more sporting, you know, and lends a bit more to our
lives
as we attend to our—
inumbrate—
tasks.
sticks and stones…
complaint is often the result of an insufficient
ability
to live within
the obvious restrictions of this
god damned cage.
complaint is a common deficiency
more prevalent than
hemorrhoids
and as these lady writers hurl their spiked shoes
at me
wailing that
their poems will never be
promulgated
all that I can say to them
is
show me more leg
show me more ass—
that’s all you (or I) have
while
it lasts
and for this common and obvious truth
they screech at me:
MOTHERFUCKER SEXIST PIG!
as if that would stop the way fruit trees
drop their fruit
or the ocean brings in the coni and
the dead spores of the Grecian
Empire
but I feel no grief for being called something
which
I am not;
in fact, it’s enthralling, somehow, like a good
back rub
on a frozen night
behind the ski lift at
Aspen.
working
ah, those days when I
ran them
in and out of my
shabby apartment.
god, I was a hairy
ugly
thing
and I backed them
all onto the
springs
flailing
away
I was the mindless
drunken ape
in a sad and
dying
neighborhood.
but strangest
of all
were the
new and continuous
arrivals:
it was a
female
parade
and
I exulted
pranced and
pounced
with hardly
an idea
of what
it
meant.
it was a well-
remembered bed-
room
painted a strange
blue.
and
most of the
ladies
left just before
noon
about the time
the mailman
arrived.
he spoke to me
one day, “my god,
man, where do you
get them all?”
“I don’t know,” I
told him.
“pardon me,” he went
on, “but you don’t
exactly look like
God’s gift to
women, how do you
do it?”
“I don’t know,”
I said.
and it was
true: it just
happened and I
did it
in my blue
bedroom
with my
dead mother’s
best lace table
linen
tacked up
over the
window.
I was a
fucking
fool.
over done
he had somehow located me again—he was on the telephone—talking
about the old days—
wonder whatever happened to Michael or Ken or
Julie Anne?—
and remember…?
—then
there were his present problems—
—he was a talker—he had always been a
talker—
and I had been a
listener
I had listened because I hadn’t wanted to
hurt him
by telling him to shut up
like the others
did
in the old
days
now
he was back
and
I held the phone out
at arm’s length
and could still hear the
sound—
I handed the phone to my girlfriend and
she listened for a
while—
finally
I took the phone and told him—
hey, man, we’ve got to stop, the meat’s burning
in the oven!
he said, o.k., man, I’ll call you
back—
(one thing I remembered about my
old buddy: he was good for his
word)
I put the phone back on the
receiver—
—we don’t have any meat in the
oven, said my
girlfriend—
—yes, we do, I told her,
it’s
me.
our laughter is muted by their agony
as the child crosses the street as deep sea divers
dive as the painters paint—
the good fight against terrible odds is the vindication
and the glory as the swallow rises toward
the moon—
it is so dark now with the sadness of
people
they were tricked, they were taught to expect the
ultimate when nothing is
promised
now young girls weep alone in small rooms
old men angrily swing their canes at
visions as
ladies comb their hair as
ants search for survival
history surrounds us
and our lives
slink away
in
shame.
murder
competition, greed, desire for fame—
after great beginnings they mostly
write when they don’t want to write, they write to
order, they write for Cadillacs and younger
girls—and to pay off
old wives.
they appear on talk shows, attend parties
with their peers.
most go to Hollywood, they become snipers and
gossips
and have more and more affairs with younger
and younger girls and/or
men.
they write between Hollywood and the parties,
it’s timeclock writing
and in between the panties and/or the
jockstraps
and the cocaine
many of them manage to screw up with the
IRS.
between old wives, new wives, newer and
newer girls (and/or)
all their royalties and residuals—
the hundreds of thousands of
dollars—
are now suddenly
debts.
the writing becomes a useless
spasm
a jerk-off of a once
mighty
gift.
it happens and happens and
continues to:
the mutilation of talent
the gods seldom
give
but so quickly
take.
what am I doing?
got to stop battling these wild speed jocks on the freeway as we
roar through hairline openings with stereo blasting through
noon and evening and darkness
when actually all we want is to sit in cool green gardens
talking quietly over drinks.
what makes us this way?—ingrown toenails?—or that the ladies
are not enough?—what foolishness makes us tweak the nose of
Death continually?
are we afraid of the slow bedpan?—or slobbering over half-
cooked peas brought to us by a bored nurse with thick
dumb legs?
what wanton hare-brained impulse makes us floor it with
only one hand on the wheel?
don’t we realize the peace of aging
gently?
what hell-call is this to war?
we are the sickest of the breed—as fine museums—great art—
generations of knowledge—are all forgotten
as we find profundity in being an
asshole—
we are going to end up as a
photograph—almost life-sized—hanging
as a warning on the
Traffic Court wall
and people will shudder just a bit and
look the other way
knowing that
too much ego is not
enough.
nervous people
you go in for an item—take it to the clerk at the register—he
doesn’t know the price—begs leave—returns after a long
time—stares at the electronic cash register—rings up the
sale with some difficulty: $47,583.64—you don’t have it
with you—he laughs—calls for help—another clerk
arrives—after another long time he finds a new total:
$1.27. I pay—then must ask for a bag—I thank the
clerk—walk to parking with the lady I am with—“you
make people nervous,” she tells me—
we drive home with the item—we put the item to its task—it
doesn’t work—the item has a factory
defect—
“I’ll take it back,” she says—
I go to the bathroom and piss squarely in the center of the
pot—warfare is just one of the problems which besets everyone
during the life of a decent day.
working out
Van Gogh cut off his ear
gave it to a
prostitute
who flung it away in
extreme
disgust.
Van, whores don’t want
ears
they want
money.
I guess that’s why you were
such a great
painter: you
didn’t understand
much
else.
how is your heart?
during my worst times
on the park benches
in the jails
or living with
whores
I always had this certain
contentment—
I wouldn’t call it
happiness—
it was more of an inner
balance
that settled for
whatever was occurring
and it helped in the
factories
You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense Page 13
