Mockingbird Wish Me Luck

  assholes! you should have burned the whole town

  down! I’m sick of it!”

  “you just don’t understand

  the poems…”

  “I do, they are rhymers, full of

  platitudes. you write bad

  poetry.”

  “look muthafucka, I been on the radio, I been printed in the L.A.

  Times!”

  “oh?”

  “well, that happened to

  you?”

  “no.”

  “o.k., muthafucka, you ain’t seen the last of

  me!”

  I suppose I haven’t. and it’s useless to tell you that I am not

  anti-black

  because

  somehow

  that’s when the whole subject becomes

  sickening.

  millionaires

  you

  no faces

  no faces

  at all

  laughing at nothing—

  let me tell you

  I have drunk in skidrow rooms with

  imbecile winos

  whose cause was better

  whose eyes still held some light

  whose voices retained some sensibility,

  and when the morning came

  we were sick but not ill,

  poor but not deluded,

  and we stretched in our beds and rose

  in the late afternoons

  like millionaires.

  poetry

  the bus driver grins while sweating in the heat

  of the plateglass windshield,

  he doesn’t have a chance—

  only Hollywood Boulevard, an impossible sun

  and an impossible timetable,

  there are so many without a chance.

  I realize that there is very little chance

  for any of

  us. poetry won’t save us or a job won’t save us,

  a good job or a bad

  job.

  we take a little bit and hang onto that until it is

  gone.

  gongs ring, dances begin, there are holidays and

  celebrations…

  we try to cheat the bad dream…

  poetry, you whore, who will go to any man and then

  leave him…

  the bus driver has Hollywood Boulevard

  I sit next to a fat lady who lays her dead thigh

  against me.

  there is a tiny roll of sweat behind one of the bus driver’s

  ears. he is ashamed to brush it

  away.

  the people look ahead or read or look out their

  windows.

  the tiny roll of sweat begins to roll

  it rolls along behind the ear

  then down the neck,

  then it’s

  gone.

  Vine street, says the bus driver,

  this is Vine

  street.

  he’s right, at last. what a marvelous thing.

  I get off at Vine Street. I need a drink or something

  to eat. I don’t care about the bus

  anymore. it is a

  rejected poem. I don’t need it

  anymore.

  there will be more busses.

  I decide upon something to eat

  with a drink as

  openers.

  I walk out of the dark and into the dark

  and sit down and

  wait.

  the painter

  he came up on the porch

  with a grinning subnormal type

  and they stood there

  drunk on wine.

  the painter had his coat wrapped around something,

  then pulled the coat away—

  it was a policeman’s helmet

  complete with badge.

  “gimme 20 bucks for this,” he said.

  “fuck off, man,” I said, “what do I want with a

  cop’s derby?”

  “ten bucks,” he said.

  “did you kill him?”

  “5 bucks…”

  “what happened to that 6 grand you made

  at your art show last month?”

  “I drank it. all in the same bar.”

  “and I never got a beer,” I said.

  “2 bucks…”

  “did you kill him?”

  “we ganged him, punched him around a bit…”

  “that’s chickenshit. I don’t want the headpiece.”

  “we’re 18 cents short of a bottle, man…”

  I gave the painter 35 cents

  keeping the chain on the door, slipping it to him

  with my fingers. he lived with his mother,

  beat his girlfriend regularly

  and really didn’t paint that

  well. but I suppose a lot of obnoxious characters

  work their way into

  immortality.

  I’m working on it myself.

  the inquisitor

  in the bathtub rereading Céline’s

  Journey to the End of the Night

  the phone rings

  and I get out

  grab a towel.

  some guy from SMART SET,

  he wants to know what’s in my mailbox

  how my life has been

  going.

  I tell him there isn’t anything in the

  mailbox or the

  life.

  he thinks that I’m holding

  back. I hope that

  I am.

  my friend william

  my friend William is a fortunate man:

  he lacks the imagination to suffer

  he kept his first job

  his first wife

  can drive a car 50,000 miles

  without a brake job

  he dances like a swan

  and has the prettiest blankest eyes

  this side of El Paso

  his garden is a paradise

  the heels of his shoes are always level

  and his handshake is firm

  people love him

  when my friend William dies

  it will hardly be from madness or cancer

  he’ll walk right past the devil

  and into heaven

  you’ll see him at the party tonight

  grinning

  over his martini

  blissful and delightful

  as some guy

  fucks his wife in the

  bathroom.

  300 poems

  look, he said, I’ve written

  300 poems in 2

  months,

  and he handed me the

  stack and I

  thought

  oo oo.

  a young girl

  walked up

  and handed him a plate of

  corn and meat

  in his cottage

  by the beach

  and the sea rolled in

  and I turned the

  white

  pages.

  I’ve been drinking

  he said

  and writing

  and the young girl said

  is there anything else

  I can get

  you?

  he was rich and I was poor

  and the sea rolled in

  and I turned the

  white

  pages.

  what do you think?

  he asked?

  and I said,

  well, some of

  these…

  but I didn’t

  finish.

  later I walked

  outside. I walked down

  the sand to where the sand got

  wet and I looked at the water and

  the moon

  and then I turned around

  and I walked up to the

  boardwalk and I thought,

  oo oo.

  lifting weights at 2 a.m.

  queers do this

 
or is it that you’re

  afraid to die?

  biceps, triceps, forceps,

  what are you going to do

  with muscles?

  well, muscles please the ladies

  and keep the bullies

  at bay—

  so

  what?

  is it worth it?

  is it worth the collected works

  of Balzac?

  or a 3 week vacation

  in Spain?

  or, is it another way of

  suffering?

  if you got paid to do it,

  you’d hate it.

  if a man got paid to make love,

  he’d hate it.

  still, one needs the

  exercise—

  this writing game:

  only the brain and soul get

  worked-out.

  quit your bitching and

  do it.

  while other people are

  sleeping

  you’re lifting a mountain

  with rivers of poems

  running off.

  reality

  my little famous bleeding elbows

  my knotty knees (especially) and

  even my balls

  hairy and wasted.

  these blue evenings of walking past buildings

  where Jews pray beautifully about seasons I

  know nothing of

  and would leave me alone

  with the roaches and ants climbing my dying body

  in some place

  too real to touch.

  earthquake

  Americans don’t know what tragedy is—

  a little 6.5 earthquake can set them to chattering

  like monkeys—

  a piece of chinaware broken,

  the Union Rescue Mission falls down—

  6 a.m.

  they sit in their cars

  they’re all driving around—

  where are they going?

  a little excitement has broken into their

  canned lives

  stranger stands next to stranger

  chattering gibberish fear

  anxious fear

  anxious laughter…

  my baby, my flowerpots, my ceiling

  my bank account

  this is just a tickler

  a feather

  and they can’t bear it…

  suppose they bombed the city

  as other cities have been bombed

  not with an a-bomb

  but with ordinary blockbusters

  day after day,

  every day

  as has happened

  in other cities of the world?

  if the rest of the world could see you today

  their laughter would bring the sun to its knees

  and even the flowers would leap from the ground

  like bulldogs

  and chase you away to where you belong

  wherever that is,

  and who cares where it is

  as long as it’s somewhere away from

  here.

  the good life at o’hare airport

  3 hour wait at the airport in

  Chicago, surrounded by killers

  I found a table alone

  and had a scotch and water

  when 4 preachers sat down,

  and look here, said one of them,

  looking at a newspaper,

  here’s a guy drunk, ran through a

  wall, killed one person, injured 4.

  if I was him, said another,

  I’d commit suicide.

  I ordered a large beer

  and sat there reading my own novel.

  look here, said the one with the paper,

  here’s a guy, no, two guys,

  tried to hijack a liquor truck,

  they were so dumb they didn’t even know

  it was only carrying wine. didn’t even

  break the seal. bound the driver

  and then stopped for coffee. the driver

  leaned on the horn and a cop car came by

  and that was it. they went in and got

  those 2 guys.

  any 2 guys that dumb, said another,

  they sure have it coming.

  look sweetie, said another to the waitress,

  we don’t want anything to drink, we don’t drink,

  but we could sure use 4

  coffees, and haven’t I seen you someplace before,

  hee hee hee?

  give me another beer, I told the

  waitress. I drink, and I’ve never seen you anyplace

  before.

  the waitress came back with 4 cups of coffee

  and the beer, and I sat there reading my own novel

  as the 4 preachers sat there

  whirling their spoons around their cups,

  clink clink clink

  and I thought, this isn’t a bad novel

  this isn’t a bad novel

  at all, but the next one is going to be

  better, and I lifted my old beer and finished it,

  and then drank some of the new

  one, and clink clink clink

  went the spoons against the cups

  and one of the preachers coughed

  and everybody was unhappy but

  me.

  the golfers

  driving through the park

  I notice men and women playing golf

  driving in their powered carts

  over billiard table lawns,

  they are my age

  but their bodies are fat

  their hair grey

  their faces waffle batter,

  and I remember being startled by my own face

  scarred, and mean as red ants

  looking at me from a department store mirror

  and the eyes mad mad mad

  I drive on and start singing

  making up the sound

  a war chant

  and there is the sun

  and the sun says, good, I know you,

  and the steering wheel is humorous

  and the dashboard laughs,

  see, the whole sky knows

  I have not lied to anything

  even death will have exits

  like a dark theatre.

  I stop at a stop sign and

  as fire burns the trees and the people and the city

  I know that there will be a place to go

  and a way to go

  and nothing need ever be

  lost.

  II

  spider on the wall:

  why do you take

  so long?

  the mockingbird

  the mockingbird had been following the cat

  all summer

  mocking mocking mocking

  teasing and cocksure;

  the cat crawled under rockers on porches

  tail flashing

  and said something angry to the mockingbird

  which I didn’t understand.

  yesterday the cat walked calmly up the driveway

  with the mockingbird alive in its mouth,

  wings fanned, beautiful wings fanned and flopping,

  feathers parted like a woman’s legs,

  and the bird was no longer mocking,

  it was asking, it was praying

  but the cat

  striding down through centuries

  would not listen.

  I saw it crawl under a yellow car

  with the bird

  to bargain it to another place.

  summer was over.

  ha ha ha ha ha, ha ha

  monkey feet

  small and blue

  walking toward you

  as the back of a building falls off

  and an airplane chews the white sky,

  doom is like the handle of a pot,

  it’s there,

  know it,

  have ice in your tea,

&
nbsp; marry,

  have children, visit your

  dentist,

  do not scream at night

  even if you feel like screaming,

  count ten

  make love to your wife,

  or if your wife isn’t there

  if there isn’t anybody there

  count 20,

  get up and walk to the kitchen

  if you have a kitchen

  and sit there sweating

  at 3 a.m. in the morning

  monkey feet

  small and blue

  walking toward you.

  a fine day and the world looks good

  someday the lion will

  walk in

  he’ll grab an arm

  just above the elbow

  my old arm

  my wrinkled dice-shooting arm

  and

  I’ll scream

  in my bedroom

  I won’t understand at all

  and he’ll be

  too strong for me,

  and people will walk in—

  a wife, a girlfriend, a bastard son,

  a stranger from down the street

  and a

  doctor

  and

  they will

  watch

  and the lion won’t bother them

  yet,

  and then my arm will be

  gone

  the doctor will put the

  stethoscope to my chest

  ask me to cough

  then

  he will turn to the others and

  say

  there’s a chance

  but I think he’s going