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don’t come round but if you do…

yeah sure, I’ll be in unless I’m out
don’t knock if the lights are out
or you hear voices or then
I might be reading Proust
if someone slips Proust under my door
or one of his bones for my stew,
and I can’t loan money or
the phone
or what’s left of my car
though you can have yesterday’s newspaper
an old shirt or a bologna sandwich
or sleep on the couch
if you don’t scream at night
and you can talk about yourself
that’s only normal;
hard times are upon us all
only I am not trying to raise a family
to send through Harvard
or buy hunting land,
I am not aiming high
I am only trying to keep myself alive
just a little longer,
so if you sometimes knock
and I don’t answer
and there isn’t a woman in here
maybe I have broken my jaw
and am looking for wire
or I am chasing the butterflies in
my wallpaper,
I mean if I don’t answer
I don’t answer, and the reason is
that I am not yet ready to kill you
or love you, or even accept you,
it means I don’t want to talk
I am busy, I am mad, I am glad
or maybe I’m stringing up a rope;
so even if the lights are on
and you hear sound
like breathing or praying or singing
a radio or the roll of dice
or typing—
go away, it is not the day
the night, the hour;
it is not the ignorance of impoliteness,
I wish to hurt nothing, not even a bug
but sometimes I gather evidence of a kind
that takes some sorting,
and your blue eyes, be they blue
and your hair, if you have some
or your mind—they cannot enter
until the rope is cut or knotted
or until I have shaven into
new mirrors, until the world is
stopped or opened
forever.

******

letter from too far

she wrote me a letter from a small
room near the Seine.
she said she was going to dancing
class, she got up, she said
at 5 o’clock in the morning
and typed at poems
or painted
and when she felt like crying
she had a special bench
by the river.
her book of Songs
would be out
in the Fall.
I did not know what to tell her
but
I told her
to get any bad teeth pulled
and be careful of the French
lover.
I put her photo by the radio
near the fan
and it moved
like something
alive.
I sat and watched it
until I had smoked the
5 or 6
cigarettes left.
then I got up
and went to bed.

******

man in the sun

she reads to me from the New Yorker
which I don’t buy, don’t know
how they get in here, but it’s
something about the Mafia
one of the heads of the Mafia
who ate too much and had it too easy
too many fine women patting his
walnuts, and he got fat sucking at good
cigars and young breasts and he
has these heart attacks—and so
one day somebody is driving him
in this big car along the road
and he doesn’t feel so good
and he asks the boy to stop and let
him out and the boy lays him out
along the road in the fine sunshine.
I don’t know whether it’s Crete or
Sicily or Italy proper
but he’s lying there in the sunshine
and before he dies he says:
how beautiful life can be, and
then he’s gone.
sometimes you’ve got to kill 4 or 5
thousand men before you somehow
get to believe that the sparrow
is immortal, money is piss and
that you have been wasting
your time.

******

they, all of them, know

ask the sidewalk painters of Paris
ask the sunlight on a sleeping dog
ask the 3 pigs
ask the paperboy
ask the music of Donizetti
ask the barber
ask the murderer
ask the man leaning against a wall
ask the preacher
ask the maker of cabinets
ask the pickpocket or the
pawnbroker or the glass blower
or the seller of manure or
the dentist
ask the revolutionist
ask the man who sticks his head in
the mouth of a lion
ask the man who will release the next
atom bomb
ask the man who thinks he’s Christ
ask the bluebird who comes home
at night
ask the peeping Tom
ask the man dying of cancer
ask the man who needs a bath
ask the man with one leg
ask the blind
ask the man with the lisp
ask the opium eater
ask the trembling surgeon
ask the leaves you walk upon
ask a rapist or a
streetcar conductor or an old man
pulling weeds in his garden
ask a bloodsucker
ask a trainer of fleas
ask a man who eats fire
ask the most miserable man you can
find in his most
miserable moment
ask a teacher of judo
ask a rider of elephants
ask a leper, a lifer, a lunger
ask a professor of history
ask the man who never cleans his
fingernails
ask a clown or ask the first face you see
in the light of day
ask your father
ask your son and
his son to be
ask me
ask a burned-out bulb in a paper sack
ask the tempted, the damned, the foolish
the wise, the slavering
ask the builders of temples
ask the men who have never worn shoes
ask Jesus
ask the moon
ask the shadows in the closet
ask the moth, the monk, the madman
ask the man who draws cartoons for
The New Yorker
ask a goldfish
ask a fern shaking to a tapdance
ask the map of India
ask a kind face
ask the man hiding under your bed
ask the man you hate the most in this
world
ask the man who drank with Dylan Thomas
ask the man who laced Jack Sharkey’s gloves
ask the sad-faced man drinking coffee
ask the plumber
ask the man who dreams of ostriches every
night
ask the ticket-taker at a freak show
ask the counterfeiter
ask the man sleeping in an alley under
a sheet of paper
ask the conquerors of nations and planets
ask the man who has just cut off his finger
ask a bookmark in the bible
ask the water dripping from a faucet while
the phone rings
ask perjury
ask the deep blue paint
ask the parachute jumper
ask the man with the bellyache
ask the divine eye so sleek and swimming
ask the boy wearing tight pants in
the expensive academy
ask the man who slipped in the bathtub
ask the man chewed by the shark
ask the one who sold me the unmatched
gloves
ask these and all those I have left out
ask the fire the fire the fire—
ask even the liars
ask anybody you please at anytime
you please on any day you please
whether it’s raining or whether
the snow is there or whether
you are stepping out onto a porch
yellow with warm heat
ask this ask that
ask the man with birdshit in his hair
ask the torturer of animals
ask the man who has seen many bullfights
in Spain
ask the owners of new Cadillacs
ask the famous
ask the timid
ask the albino
and the statesman
ask the landlords and the poolplayers
ask the phonies
ask the hired killers
ask the bald men and the fat men
and the tall men and the
short men
ask the one-eyed men, the
oversexed and undersexed men
ask the men who read all the newspaper
editorials
ask the men who breed roses
ask the men who feel almost no pain
ask the dying
ask the mowers of lawns and the attenders
of football games
ask any of these or all of these
ask ask ask and
they’ll all tell you:
a snarling wife on the balustrade is more
than a man can bear.

******

beerbottle

a very miraculous thing just happened:
my beerbottle flipped over backwards
and landed on its bottom on the floor,
and I have set it upon the table to foam
down,
but the photos were not so lucky today
and there is a small slit along the leather
of my left shoe, but it’s all very simple:
we cannot acquire too much: there are laws
we know nothing of, all manner of nudges
set us to burning or freezing; what sets
the blackbird in the cat’s mouth
is not for us to say, or why some men
are jailed like pet squirrels
while others nuzzle in enormous breasts
through endless nights—this is the
task and the terror, and we are not
taught why. still, it’s lucky the bottle
landed straightside up, and although
I have one of wine and one of whiskey,
this foretells, somehow, a good night,
and perhaps tomorrow my nose will be longer:
new shoes, less rain, more poems.

******

the girls

I have been looking at
the same
lampshade
for
5 years
and it has gathered
a bachelor’s dust
and
the girls who enter here
are too
busy
to clean it
but I don’t mind
I have been too
busy
to notice
until now
that the light
shines
badly
through
5 years’
worth.

******

x-pug

he hooked to the body hard
took it well
and loved to fight
had seven in a row and a small fleck
over one eye,
and then he met a kid from Camden
with arms thin as wires—
it was a good one,
the safe lions roared and threw money;
they were both up and down many times,
but he lost that one
and he lost the rematch
in which neither of them fought at all,
hanging on to each other like lovers through the boos,
and now he’s over at Mike’s
changing tires and oil and batteries,
the fleck over the eye
still young,
but you don’t ask him,
you don’t ask him anything
except maybe
you think it’s going to rain?
or
you think the sun’s gonna come out?
to which he’ll usually answer
hell no,
but you’ll have your important tank of gas
and drive off.

******

john dillinger and le chasseur maudit

it’s unfortunate, and simply not the style, but I don’t care:
girls remind me of hair in the sink, girls remind me of intestines
and bladders and excretory movements; it’s unfortunate also that
ice-cream bells, babies, engine-valves, plagiostomes, palm trees,
footsteps in the hall…all excite me with the cold calmness
of the gravestone; nowhere, perhaps, is there sanctuary except
in hearing that there were other desperate men:
Dillinger, Rimbaud, Villon, Babyface Nelson, Seneca, Van Gogh,
or desperate women: lady wrestlers, nurses, waitresses, whores
poetesses…although,
I do suppose the breaking out of ice-cubes is important
or a mouse nosing an empty beercan—
two hollow emptinesses looking into each other,
or the nightsea stuck with soiled ships
that enter the chary web of your brain with their lights,
with their salty lights
that touch you and leave you
for the more solid love of some India;
or driving great distances without reason
sleep-drugged through open windows that
tear and flap your shirt like a frightened bird,
and always the stoplights, always red,
nightfire and defeat, defeat…
scorpions, scraps, fardels:
x-jobs, x-wives, x-faces, x-lives,
Beethoven in his grave as dead as a beet;
red wheel-barrows, yes, perhaps,
or a letter from Hell signed by the devil
or two good boys beating the guts out of each other
in some cheap stadium full of screaming smoke,
but mostly, I don’t care, sitting here
with a mouthful of rotten teeth,
sitting here reading Herrick and Spenser and
Marvell and Hopkins and Bronte (Emily, today);
and listening to the Dvorak Midday Witch
or Franck’s Le Chasseur Maudit,
actually I don’t care, and it’s unfortunate:
I have been getting letters from a young poet
(very young, it seems) telling me that some day
I will most surely be recognized as
one of the world’s great poets. Poet!
a malversation: today I walked in the sun and streets
of this city: seeing nothing, learning nothing, being
nothing, and coming back to my room
I passed an old woman who smiled a horrible smile;
she was already dead, and everywhere I remembered wires:
telephone wires, electric wires, wires for electric faces
trapped like goldfish in the glass and smiling,
ing smoke,
but mostly, I don’t care, sitting here
with a mouthful of rotten teeth,
sitting here reading Herrick and Spenser and
Marvell and Hopkins and Bronte (Emily, today);
and listening to the Dvorak Midday Witch
or Franck’s Le Chasseur Maudit,
actually I don’t care, and it’s unfortunate:
I have been getting letters from a young poet
(very young, it seems) telling me that some day
I will most surely be recognized as
one of the world’s great poets. Poet!
a malversation: today I walked in the sun and streets
of this city: seeing nothing, learning nothing, being
nothing, and coming back to my room
I passed an old woman who smiled a horrible smile;
she was already dead, and everywhere I remembered wires:
telephone wires, electric wires, wires for electric faces
trapped like goldfish in the glass and smiling,
and the birds were gone, none of the birds wanted wire
or the smiling of wire
and I closed my door (at last)
but through the windows it was the same:
a horn honked, somebody laughed, a toilet flushed,
and oddly then
I thought of all the horses with numbers
that have gone by in the screaming,
gone by like Socrates, gone by like Lorca,
like Chatterton…
I’d rather imagine our death will not matter too much
except as a matter of disposal, a problem,
like dumping the garbage,
and although I have saved the young poet’s letters,
I do not believe them
but like at the
diseased palm trees
and the end of the sun,
I sometimes look.

******

a little sleep and peace of stillness

if you’re a man, Los Angeles is where you hang it up and
battle; or if you’re a woman, and you’ve got enough leg and
the rest, you sail it against a mountain backdrop so
when you grow grey you can hide in Beverly Hills
in a mansion so nobody can see how you’ve decayed.
so we moved here—and what do we come up against
except a religious maniac in the next shack who
drinks cheap wine and has visions and plays his radio
as loudly as possible, my god!
I know all the spirituals now!
I know how very much I have sinned and I realize I must die
and I’ve got to get ready…
but I could use a little sleep first
just a little sleep and peace of silence.
I open the window and there he is
out on the lawn
dancing to a hymn
a spiritual
a whatever.
he has on a pair of red bathing trunks
he’s well-tanned and drunk on wine
but his movements are hard and awkward—
he’s too fat
a walnut-like man, distorted and shapeless at
55.
and he waves his arms in the sun and
the birds fly up
frightened
and then he whirls back into his doorway.
but the view from the street here is good—
there are Japanese and old women and young girls and
beggars.
we have large palms
plenty of birds
and the parking’s not bad…
but our religious maniac does not work
he’s too clever to work
and so we both lie around
listen to his radio
drink
and I wonder which of us will get to hell first—
him with his bible or me with my Racing Form
but if I’ve got to hear him down there I know I’m going to have to
have some help, and the next dance will be mine.
right now I wish I had something to sell so I could hide in a place
with walls twelve feet high
with moats
and high-yellow mamas.
but it looks like some long days and
nights ahead,
as always.
at the least I can only hope for the weakening of a
radio tube,
and at the most for his death,
which we are both praying and
ready for.

******

now

I had boils the size of tomatoes
all over me
they stuck a drill into me
down at the county hospital,
and
just as the sun went down
everyday
there was a man in a nearby ward
he’d start hollering for his friend Joe.
JOE! he’d holler, OH JOE! JOE! J O E!
COME GET ME, JOE!
Joe never came by.
I’ve never heard such mournful
sounds.
Joe was probably working off a
piece of ass or
attempting to solve a crossword puzzle.
I’ve always said
if you want to find out who your friends are
go to a madhouse or
jail.
and if you want to find out where love is not
be a perpetual
loser.
I was very lucky with my boils
being drilled and tortured
against the backdrop of the Sierra Madre mountains
while that sun went down;
when that sun went down I knew what I would do
when I finally got that drill in my hands
like I have it
now.

******

the trash men

here they come
these guys
grey truck
radio playing
they are in a hurry
it’s quite exciting:
shirt open
bellies hanging out
they run out the trash bins
roll them out to the fork lift
and then the truck grinds it upward
with far too much sound…
they had to fill out application forms
to get these jobs
they are paying for homes and
drive late model cars
they get drunk on Saturday night
now in the Los Angeles sunshine
they run back and forth with their trash bins
all that trash goes somewhere
and they shout to each other
then they are all up in the truck
driving west toward the sea
none of them know
that I am alive
REX DISPOSAL CO.

******

tv

I went to this place to see a movie
on tv
Alexander the Great,
and here come the armies
ta ta ta
horses, spears, knives, swords, shields,
men falling…
then turn to a roller derby—
here’s a girl strangling another,
then back to Alexander—
a guy jumps out and assassinates Alex’s father,
Alex kills the guy, Alex is king,
back to the roller derby—
a man is down across the track and another man rams his head
with his skates—
and here come the armies
they appear to be fighting in a cave, there’s smoke and
flame, swords,
men falling—
the Thunderbirds are behind,
one girl dives under another girl’s ass,
throws her into the rail—
Alexander stands there listening to a guy who is holding
a glass of wine in his hand, and this boy is really telling
Alex wherehow, you know, and he turns his back to walk away
and Alex spears him—
the Thunderbirds are behind, they send out
Big John—
ta ta ta, here come the armies
they are splashing through water
through forests, they are going to get it
all
ta ta ta—
Big John didn’t make it,
the girls are out again now—
Alexander is dying
Alexander the Great is dying
and they pass by his pallet in the open
he is dressed in fancy black garb and looks like
Richard Burton
the boys have their helmets off as they pass
and there’s Alex’s love by the pallet, and then
Alex begins to go, some men rush up,
one asks, Alex, who do you turn the rule over to?
who will rule now?
they wait.
he says, the strongest, and he dies
we are shown the clouds, the heavens,
way up there, and—
the Thunderbirds pull it out
in the last 12 seconds, they win it
112 to 110,
the crowd is consumed with Joy,
mercury bleeds into the light,
good night, sweet prince,
hail Mary,
Jesus Christ, what a
night.

******

lost

no
we can’t we can’t win it
I’ve decided we can’t win it
just for a while we thought we could
but that was just for a while
now we know we can’t win it
we can’t stand still and win it
or run and win it
or do right and win it
or do wrong and win it
somebody else is going to win it
that’s why somebody else is there and
we are here
it is terrible to be defeated
in what seems to count
it will happen
to accept it is impossible
to know it is more important
than doves or switchbrakes or
love.

******

hot

she was hot, she was so hot
I didn’t want anybody else to have her,
and if I didn’t get home on time
she’d be gone, and I couldn’t bear that—
I’d go mad…
it was foolish I know, childish,
but I was caught in it, I was caught.
I delivered all the mail
and then Henderson put me on the night pickup run
in an old army truck,
the damn thing began to heat halfway through the run
and the night went on
me thinking about my hot Miriam
and jumping in and out of the truck
filling mailsacks
the engine continuing to heat up
the temperature needle was at the top
HOT HOT
like Miriam.
I leaped in and out
3 more pickups and into the station
I’d be, my car
waiting to get me to Miriam who sat on my blue couch
with scotch on the rocks
crossing her legs and swinging her ankles
like she did,
2 more stops…
the truck stalled at a traffic light, it was hell
kicking it over
again…
I had to be home by 8, 8 was the deadline for Miriam.
I made the last pickup and the truck stalled at a signal
1/2 block from the station…
it wouldn’t start, it couldn’t start…
I locked the doors, pulled the key and ran down to the
station…
I threw the keys down…. signed out…
your god damned truck is stalled at the signal,
I shouted,
Pico and Western…
…I ran down the hall, put the key into the door,
opened it…. her drinking glass was
there, and a note:
sun of a bitch:
I wated until 5 after ate
you don’t love me
you sun of a bitch
somebody will love me
I been wateing all day

Miriam
I poured a drink and let the water run into the tub
there were 5,000 bars in town
and I’d make 25 of them
looking for Miriam
her purple teddy bear held the note
as he leaned against a pillow
I gave the bear a drink, myself a drink
and got into the hot
water.

******

love

love, he said, gas
kiss me off
kiss my lips
kiss my hair
my fingers
my eyes my brain
make me forget
love, he said, gas
he had a room on the 3rd floor,
rejected by a dozen women
35 editors
and half a dozen hiring agencies,
now I’m not saying he was any
good
he turned on all the jets
without lighting them
and went to bed
some hours later a guy on his
way to room 309
lit a cigar in the
hall
and a sofa flew out the window
one wall shivered down like wet sand
a purple flame waved 40 feet high in the air
the guy in bed
didn’t know or care
but I’d have to say
he was pretty good
that day.

******

the way

murdered in the alleys of the land
frost-bitten against flagpoles
pawned by females
educated in the dark for the dark
vomiting into plugged toilets
in rented rooms full of roaches and mice
no wonder we seldom sing
day or noon or night
the useless wars
the useless years
the useless loves
and they ask us,
why do you drink so much?
well, I suppose the days were made
to be wasted
the years and the loves were made
to be wasted.
we can’t cry, and it helps to laugh—
it’s like letting out
dreams, ideals,
poisons
don’t ask us to sing,
laughing is singing to us,
you see, it was a terrible joke
Christ should have laughed on the cross,
it would have petrified his killers
now there are more killers than ever
and I write poems for them.

******

out of the arms…

out of the arms of one love
and into the arms of another
I have been saved from dying on the cross
by a lady who smokes pot
writes songs and stories,
and is much kinder than the last,
much much kinder,
and the sex is just as good or better.
it isn’t pleasant to be put on the cross
and left there,
it is much more pleasant to forget a love which didn’t
work
as all love
finally
doesn’t work…
it is much more pleasant to make love
along the shore in Del Mar
in room 42, and afterwards
sitting up in bed
drinking good wine, talking and touching
smoking
listening to the waves…
I have died too many times
believing and waiting, waiting
in a room
staring at a cracked ceiling
waiting for the phone, a letter, a knock, a sound…
going wild inside
while she danced with strangers in nightclubs…
out of the arms of one love
and into the arms of another
it’s not pleasant to die on the cross,
it’s much more pleasant to hear your name whispered in
the dark.

******

he spoke to mice and sparrows
and his hair was white at the age of 16.
his father beat him every day and his mother
lit candles in the church.
his grandmother came while the boy slept
and prayed for the devil to let loose his hold upon
him
while his mother listened and cried over the
bible.
he didn’t seem to notice young girls
he didn’t seem to notice the games boys played
there wasn’t much he seemed to notice
he just didn’t seem interested.
he had a very lárge, ugly mouth and the teeth
stuck out
and his eyes were small and lusterless.
his shoulders were slumped and his back was bent
like an old man’s.
he lived in our neighborhood.
we talked about him when we got bored and then
went on to more interesting things.
he seldom left his house. we would have liked to
torture him
but his father
who was a huge and terrible man
tortured him for
us.
one day the boy died. at 17 he was still a
boy. a death in a small neighborhood is noted with
alacrity, and then forgotten 3 or 4 days
later.
but the death of this boy seemed to stay with us
all. we kept talking about it
in our boy-men’s voices
at 6 p.m. just before dark
just before dinner.
and whenever I drive through that neighborhood now
decades later
I still think of his death
while having forgotten all the other deaths
and everything else that happened
then.

******

hey, dolly

she left me 5 weeks ago and went to Utah.
that is, I think she left.
the other day I went out to mail her a letter
and I saw her sitting on the bus stop bench,
it was her hair there
from behind
and all the pounding started in me again
I walked up quickly and looked at the face—
it was somebody else. freckles, pugnose, greeneyes,
nothing, nothing.
then I was on Western Avenue going from bar to bar
and I saw her in front of me again.
I saw those tight pants, I knew that ass,
and there was the hair again,
and the way she walked,
I walked faster to catch her,
I got even with her and saw her face—
an Indian’s nose, blue eyes, a mouth like a frog—
nothing, nothing, nothing.
then there was a girl in a bar playing piano.
it wasn’t her but when the hair fell in a certain way,
for a moment, it was. and the hair was the same length
and the lips were similar but not the same, and
she saw me looking while she was singing, I was drunk,
of course, it helped the delusion, and she
said, is there anything special you want to hear?
Dolly, I said, and she sang—
Hey, Dolly…
just now I looked up and she was
across the street.
she walked out of the apartment across the street
with a young blond man and she stood there in sun glasses,
and I thought, what’s she doing across the street in
sun glasses, and she smiled at me through the window
but she didn’t wave and then she got in the car with the
young man, it was a new car, small and red, expensive,
and they drove away toward the west. I’m sure it was
her, this time.

******

a poorly night

you came out, she said,
and then you kicked this guy’s car
and then you threw yourself into a bush
you crushed the whole
bush,
I don’t know what your agony is all
about
but don’t you think you should see a shrink?
I’ve got an awful good shrink, you’d
like him.
answer me, she said,
I get worried about the police when you
act like that, I’m very paranoid about the
police.
answer me, she said, why do you
act like that?
listen, she said, do you want me to
leave?
after she left I picked up a chair and
threw it out the window, there was much
glass and the screen was broken
too.
how many dead beasts float and walk from Wales to
Los Angeles?

******

looking for a job

it was Philly and the bartender said
what and I said, gimme a draft, Jim,
got to get the nerves straight, I’m
going to look for a job. you, he said,
a job?
yeah, Jim, I saw something in the paper,
no experience necessary.
and he said, hell, you don’t want a job,
and I said, hell no, but I need money,
and I finished the beer
and got on the bus and I watched the numbers
and soon the numbers got closer
and then I was right there
and I pulled the cord and the bus stopped and
I got off.
it was a large building made of tin
the sliding door was stuck in the dirt
I pulled it back and went in
and there wasn’t any floor, just more ground,
lumpy, wet, and it stank
and there were sounds like things being sawed in half
and things drilled and it was dark
and men walked on girders overhead
and men pushed trucks across the ground
and men sat at machines doing things
and there were shots of lightning and thunder
and suddenly a bucket full of flame came swinging at
my head, it roared and boiled with flame
it hung from a loose chain and it came right at me
and somebody hollered, HEY, LOOK OUT!
and I just ducked under the bucket
feeling the heat go over me,
and somebody asked,
WHAT DO YOU WANT?
and I said, WHERE IS YOUR NEAREST CRAPPER?
and I was told
and I went inside
then came out and saw silhouettes of men
moving through flame and sound and
I walked to the door, got outside, and
took the bus back to the bar and sat down
and ordered another draft, and Jim asked,
what happened? I said, they didn’t want me, Jim.
then this whore came in and sat down and everybody
looked at her, she looked fine, and I remember it
was the first time in my life I almost wished I had a
vagina and clit instead of what I had, but in 2 or 3 days
I got over that and I was reading the
want ads again.

******

the 8 count

this one
always arrives at the wrong time
a basically good sort
I suppose
an honest man
but he doesn’t take the 8 count
well
we’re all beaten
but somehow
it’s the manner in which he takes the count
after a visit from him
I am sickened for 3 or 4 days
I give him board and shelter and sometimes
money
but how he snarls and bitches
sucking at my cans of beer
if he expects deliverance in return for what he gives
he isn’t going to get deliverance
because he doesn’t give anything
no light
no love
no laughter no learning
nothing to
remember
the way of this one sickens me
he brings me sorrow when I have sorrow
he brings me madness when I have madness
I am a selfish man
over his last sweaty handshake
I told him I could carry him no longer
now when my soul has to puke
it will puke of its own
volition
and not from a
knock upon the
door.

******

the fisherman

he comes out at 7:30 a.m. every day
with 3 peanut butter sandwiches, and
there’s one can of beer
which he floats in the baitbucket.
he fishes for hours with a small trout pole
three-quarters of the way down the pier.
he’s 75 years old and the sun doesn’t tan him,
and no matter how hot it gets
the brown and green lumberjack stays on.
he catches starfish, baby sharks, and mackerel;
he catches them by the dozen,
speaks to nobody.
sometime during the day
he drinks his can of beer.
at 6 p.m. he gathers his gear and his catch
walks down the pier
across several streets
where he enters a small Santa Monica
apartment
goes to the bedroom and opens the evening paper
as his wife throws the starfish, the sharks, the mackerel
into the garbage
he lights his pipe
and waits for dinner.

******

warm asses

this Friday night
the Mexican girls at the Catholic carnival
look especially good
their husbands are in the bars
and the Mexican girls look young
hawk-nosed with cruel strong eyes,
asses warm in tight bluejeans
they have been taken somehow,
their husbands are tired of those warm asses
and the young Mexican girls walk with their children,
there is real sorrow in their cruel strong eyes,
as they remember nights when their handsome men—
not now any longer handsome—
said such beautiful things to them
beautiful things they will never hear again,
and under the moon and in the flashing of the
carnival lights
I see it all and I stand quietly and mourn for them.
they see me looking—
the old goat is looking at us
he’s looking at our eyes;
they smile at each other, talk, walk off together,
laugh, look at me over their shoulders.
I walk over to a booth
put a dime on number eleven and win a chocolate cake
with 13 colored suckers stuck in the
top.
that’s fair enough for an ex-Catholic
and an admirer of warm and young and
no-longer used
mournful Mexican asses.

******

wax job

man, he said, sitting on the steps
your car sure needs a wash and wax job
I can do it for you for 5 bucks,
I got the wax, I got the rags, I got everything
I need.
I gave him the 5 and went upstairs.
when I came down 4 hours later
he was sitting on the steps drunk
and offered me a can of beer.
he said he’d get the car the next
day.
the next day he got drunk again and
I loaned him a dollar for a bottle of
wine, his name was Mike
a world war II veteran.
his wife worked as a nurse.
the next day I came down and he was sitting
on the steps and he said,
you know, I been sitting here looking at
ur car,
wondering just how I was gonna do it,
I wanna do it real good.
the next day Mike said it looked like rain
and it sure as hell wouldn’t make any sense
to wash and wax a car when it was gonna rain.
the next day it looked like rain again.
and the next.
then I didn’t see him anymore.
a week later I saw his wife and she said,
they took Mike to the hospital,
he’s all swelled-up, they say it’s from the
drinking.
listen, I told her, he said he was going to wax my
car, I gave him 5 dollars to wax my
car.
he’s in the critical ward, she said,
he might die…
I was sitting in their kitchen
drinking with his wife
when the phone rang.
she handed the phone to me.
it was Mike. listen, he said, come on down and
get me, I can’t stand this
place.
I drove on down there, walked into the
hospital, walked up to his bed and
said, let’s go Mike.
they wouldn’t give him his clothes
so Mike walked to the elevator in his
gown.
we got on and there was a kid driving the
elevator and eating a popsicle.
nobody’s allowed to leave here in a gown,
he said.
you just drive this thing, kid, I said,
we’ll worry about the gown.
Mike was all puffed-up, triple size
but I got him into the car somehow
and gave him a cigarette.
I stopped at the liquor store for 2 six packs
then went on in. I drank with Mike and his wife until
11 p.m.
then went upstairs…
where’s Mike? I asked his wife 3 days later,
you know he said he was going to wax my car.
Mike died, she said, he’s gone.
you mean he died? I asked.
yes, he died, she said.
I’m sorry, I said, I’m very sorry
it rained for a week after that and I figured the only
way I’d get the 5 back was to go to bed with his wife
but you know
she moved out 2 weeks later
an old guy with white hair moved in there
and he had one blind eye and played the French Horn.
there was no way I could make it with
him.

******

some people

some people never go crazy.
me, sometimes I’ll lie down behind the couch
for 3 or 4 days.
they’ll find me there.
it’s Cherub, they’ll say, and
they pour wine down my throat
rub my chest
sprinkle me with oils.
then, I’ll rise with a roar,
rant, rage—
curse them and the universe
as I send them scattering over the
lawn.
I’ll feel much better,
sit down to toast and eggs,
hum a little tune,
suddenly become as lovable as a
pink
overfed whale.
some people never go crazy.
what truly horrible lives
they must lead.

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