Literature at a university in Oregon,
I’ve been drunk with him and his wife, several times,
so he teaches me,
that’s nice.
99 degrees in Burbank
and as I sit here
any number of things are happening,
mostly unhappy things
like swearing mechanics with hangovers climbing under cars
and drunken dentists pulling teeth and cursing
and bald-headed surgeons making too much of a mess,
and the editor of Time magazine backing his car out of the
driveway
after an argument with his wife;
it’s 99 degrees in Burbank
and there’s a jet overhead,
I don’t think it will bomb me,
those Asians don’t have enough tax money,
the only clever Asians are the ones who claim they are
Supremely Blessed, speak good English,
grow grey thick beards plus a heavenly smile topped by
shining eyes and
charge $4 admit at the Shrine to
teach placidity and non-ambition
and screw half the intellectual girls in the city.
it’s 99 degrees in Burbank
and those who will survive will survive
and those who will die will die,
and most will dry up and look like toads eating hamburger
sandwiches at noon,
I don’t know what to do—
send money and the way,
be kind to me,
I like it
effortless, sweet and easy, remember,
I never bombed
anybody, I
can’t even kill this
fly.
happy new year
I have them timed—
first the nurse will arrive in her nice
yellow automobile—4:10 p.m.—
she always shows me a lot of
leg—and I always look—
then think—
keep your leg, baby.
then, after that,
there’s the man who arrives
and takes his bulldog
out to crap
about the time I’m out to mail
my letters. We test each other,
never speak—I live without working,
he works without
living;
I can see us some day
battling on his front lawn—
he screaming, “you bum!”
and myself screaming back:
“lackey! slave!”
as his bulldog chews my leg
and the neighbors pelt me
with stones.
I guess I better get interested in
Mexican jumping beans
and the Rose Bowl
Parade.
the shoelace
a woman, a
tire that’s flat, a
disease, a
desire; fears in front of you,
fears that hold so still
you can study them
like pieces on a
chessboard…
it’s not the large things that
send a man to the
madhouse. death he’s ready for, or
murder, incest, robbery, fire, flood…
no, it’s the continuing series of small tragedies
that send a man to the
madhouse…
not the death of his love
but a shoelace that snaps
with no time left…
the dread of life
is that swarm of trivialities
that can kill quicker than cancer
and which are always there—
license plates or taxes
or expired driver’s license,
or hiring or firing,
doing it or having it done to you, or
constipation
speeding tickets
rickets or crickets or mice or termites or
roaches or flies or a
broken hook on a
screen, or out of gas
or too much gas,
the sink’s stopped-up, the landlord’s drunk,
the president doesn’t care and the governor’s
crazy.
lightswitch broken, mattress like a
porcupine;
$105 for a tune-up, carburetor and fuel pump at
Sears Roebuck;
and the phone bill’s up and the market’s
down
and the toilet chain is
broken,
and the light has burned out—
the hall light, the front light, the back light,
the inner light; it’s
darker than hell
and twice as
expensive.
then there’s always crabs and ingrown toenails
and people who insist they’re
your friends;
there’s always that and worse;
leaky faucet, Christ and Christmas;
blue salami, 9 day rains,
50 cent avocados
and purple
liverwurst.
or making it
as a waitress at Norm’s on the split shift,
or as an emptier of
bedpans,
or as a carwash or a busboy
or a stealer of old lady’s purses
leaving them screaming on the sidewalks
with broken arms at the age of
80.
suddenly
2 red lights in your rear view mirror
and blood in your
underwear;
toothache, and $979 for a bridge
$300 for a gold
tooth,
and China and Russia and America, and
long hair and short hair and no
hair, and beards and no
faces, and plenty of zigzag but no
pot, except maybe one to piss in and
the other one around your
gut.
with each broken shoelace
out of one hundred broken shoelaces,
one man, one woman, one
thing
enters a
madhouse.
so be careful
when you
bend over.
chilled green
what is it?
an old woman, fat, yellow dress,
torn stockings
sitting on the curbing
with a little boy.
98 degrees at 3 in the afternoon
it seems
obscene.
but look, they are calm,
almost happy,
they eat the green jello
and the red roses shine.
life
to be eaten by a hog with
bad breath
as the lemons swing in the wind
yellow and ours.
III
lovers everywhere
clutch like asparagus
leaves
american matador
of course, he still gets his choice
after the bullfights,
but like with any other man
the special one comes along.
you can feel it in the stomach
when they get you there,
and the girl said,
“It’s either bullfighting or me.”
he turned on love
to look at the face of death.
you can see him at Tijuana
working close to the horn
taking chance after
chance. he’s been gored
a number of times.
and you wonder if the thing is
working at his stomach
as he fights
getting him in closer
than he should
the sword is pointed
in the sunlight,
it goes in:
love.
i saw an old-fashioned whore today
at the Thrifty drugstore
buying a 5th of gin and a 5th of vodka
she was a dyed blond
and she was relaxed in a black and white striped dress
that fell just below knee-length
and her breasts were large
and she was a little bit fat
and the salesgirl who served her showed disgust
but the whore was used to all that
and waited for her change
and for the bottles to be bagged
and when the whore walked out
she walked out easily
and people looked up from their magazines
and the boys around the newsstand looked
and the people parking their cars looked
and I walked behind her
and I looked
and she got into a green car
pooltable green
lit a cigarette,
and I’m sure she drove off to someplace
magic
where people were always laughing and
the music was always playing
and the drinks were good
and the furniture and rugs were nice
and the mountains were tall
and there were 3 German shepherds on the lawn,
and when she made love you knew it
and the price was not a lifetime,
the blue cigarette smoke curling in the black
ashtray a little wet with beer and mix,
she’d roll you with the security of a leopard
getting a deer,
and you ought to see her in the bathtub
singing an aria from one of those
Italian operas.
poem for barbara, poem for jane, poem for frances, poem for all or any of them
the fish ate the flower
and the tombs whistled
Dixie
as you told me you didn’t care
anymore
old men in the pawnshops of the world
looked around and killed themselves in my mind
when you said you
didn’t care
anymore
the day I saw you with your new
lover
you and your new lover
walking down my boulevards
past the butcher shop
past the liquor store
past the real estate
agency
ha ha
suddenly I didn’t care
anymore
I went into the store and I bought
a figurine of a fawn
a small cactus
a box of shrimp
a pair of green gloves
a paring knife
some incense
pepper milk eggs
a fifth of
whiskey
and a roadmap of lower
Texas
the clerk put it all in a bag
it bulged and was heavy and
at last I knew that I had
something.
short order
I took my girlfriend to your last poetry reading,
she said.
yes, yes? I asked.
she’s young and pretty, she said.
and? I asked.
she hated your
guts.
then she stretched out on the couch
and pulled off her
boots.
I don’t have very good legs,
she said.
all right, I thought, I don’t have very good
poetry; she doesn’t have very good
legs.
scramble two.
the dwarf
we’d had our icecream cones
been scared by a dog
picked flowers
held hands in the sunlight.
my little girl is 6
and as good a girl as can
be.
we walked back to my place
where two ladies were moving
out of the apartment
next door.
one was a dwarf,
quite squat
with short trunk-like
legs.
“Hank, what’s wrong with that
woman?”
I’m sorry, little lady,
that my child didn’t know
that there wasn’t anything
wrong with you.
merry christmas
There I am
hungover, I’ve just made it in
and sit next to the mother of my child;
she sits there old and grey,
I sit there old and greying…
there’s a 6 year old daughter,
it’s Christmas at Edison Grammar School,
December 17th,
1 p.m.
I sit mostly with women.
ah, there’s a guy, and there’s a guy…
what’s the matter with those bums?
no jobs? too
bad.
first there’s something…
they need 5 nominations for the
P.T.A. board.
4 old dames nominate each other,
like sneaky Hitlers.
nobody wants the 5th nomination…
“Will everybody in favor of the nominations
being closed, please Yea in the
affirmative?”
there’s a dog in there…somebody
steps on his
tail:
“YEA-IKE!” he goes…
everybody laughs, the nominations are closed.
Jesus Christ,
by a dog…
o.k., trot them on.
no wait. the orchestra. tiny little people with
tiny little violins, most serious little
people. they are the string section.
they play “Christmas Songs” under the direction
of Mr. Plepler and Mr. Mettler.
Mettler? oh well, it’s not
very good.
“Five Little Christmas Bells,” courtesy A.M. & P.M. Kindergarten,
has been changed to “Rocking The Child.”
no reason is
given.
the dog has been
kicked out. I am still there
with hangover.
next the Kindergartens sing
“Jingle Bells.” they’ve been taught by
Mrs. Bowers, Miss Lemon, Miss Lieberman.
I check my program…
how much longer?
I notice that the children are black, white,
oriental, brown…it’s integration
but it’s easy, they show us how easy.
2nd, 3rd, 4th grades…
“Twelve Days of Christmas,” they hold up paintings,
take them down; up down, up down, and back to
the Partridge in the Pear Tree.
they’ve done it. perfect. even with the
mistakes. courtesy Mrs. La Brache, Mrs. Bitticks.
next comes
“Pine Cones and Holly Berries,” not so
good.
now here are the 5th and 6th graders…
“Santa and the Mouse”…
it’s garbled, nobody can hear what they are
saying. it’s under the direction of
Mr. Doerflinger. and he flings ’em.
he sits them down and sits right down with them
and all you can hear is
Mr. Doerflinger’s beautiful voice.
Doerflinger seems everywhere. there he is in the center.
there he is showing his
buttocks. he likes to leap and run
about. he sings and sings and gives his 5th and 6th
graders the minor parts to back his
singular chorus. I try to force myself to get jealous
of Doerflinge
r but I
can’t. I’m very happy that I am not
Mr. Doerflinger. a woman across the aisle turns to me:
“He has a beautiful voice,” she says.
“Yes,” I smile back,
“he has.”
“Christmas Tree,” 3rd, 4th, 5th graders.
then, of course, we have
“Deck the Halls.”
courtesy of Mrs. Homes.
o, my god, it’s the 1st and 2nd graders
now! I’m nervous as shit.
I’m sick, I
don’t know what to
do. I’ve done time, lain in alleys drunk,
slept with 50 women, I can’t take
it…the mother of my child seems
quite calm. I’m the
coward…where is she?
all of a sudden they bring them through the
back door—
they’ve been bringing them
through the front.
what’s going on?
there’s my kid, she’s walking
past. “hi!” I say, “hi!”
she smiles and puts a finger to her
lips. “shhh…”
they file onto the
platform. 1st and 2nd graders,
c/o Mr. Garnes, Miss McCormick, Mrs. Nagata, Mrs.
Samarge. o.k.
“Too Fat for the Chimney”…
not too good,
but she keeps looking at me and grinning,
singing, waving;
I smile back, wave, all
grins…the old jailbird…
then “Toy Trains.”
much better. we applaud. they file out in order,
Mockingbird Wish Me Luck Page 8
