eradicate but that he COULD and KNEW IT and it was easier to turn
it over to God because you would finally have to eradicate
everything including self (though u usually began with self and
by eradicating self you eradicated the rest) and that would make God
a failure and that would not do because if you eliminate God
you have to come down to self and Self built in 20 or 30 or 60 years
cannot match a 2000 year backlog of root and tradition and so Dos
did the wise thing in admitting that he could be wrong although he
felt right and i let the old man shit and spew tara bubu and slept
in wool blankets
they broke up the crap game from the tower
the screw pointed his m.g. down
the guy with the dice was taking too big a chunk from
each pot and the losers were getting hot I guess i should have
said it to the old man that way but one guy said to the furnisher
of dice DON’T PUT YOUR HAND IN THERE AGAIN UNTIL I TELL
U TO
and that was that until the screw got busy pointed his
steel nose
they came back for me and put me in some kind of room
they were making out a report
they asked me how to spell some words
like Andernach and so forth
i had a long red beard by then
and they asked me why
and i said
have you ever had the end cell where they
pass out one razorblade at the first cell and that same razor blade is
used by the last man in the last cell, and have you ever celled with an
old man whose only joy in life is eating and shitting and shaving and
wd u take 1/3 of his joy by taking the blade and shaving FIRST?
besides i use this red beard to fight the wool blankets with
i believe the kid is psycho one of them said
anyhow 3 or 4 days later
they let me out
only first i had to go through another physical for the army
but once again
i couldn’t get past the sike
and that same day
when they let me out
even before i tried to get
a room i lay down in that park outside the philly library
i got on
my back and i felt little grass bugs crawling upon me and i let them
crawl they were beautifully clean
and i let the clouds come down
into my head but the sky was a bad color it hurt my eyes it was all
not good i began to fill up with sadness
and i heard some girls come by
talking and laughing and one of them tripped over my ankle
and she said OOOh OOOH and then laughed
and i glared
up at them outa my red wool beard and one of them said
OOOOOH I WANT HIM !!!
and then i fell back and went back to the clouds
until later
clambering up out of the misery of the tomb
i sat upon a park bench watching traffic go by
and then it came a long caravan of trucks
filled with good young soldiers who only wanted to live
and i was young and watching and for a moment i loved them the crowd
but once again they turned on me and from the first truck
came a hissing and a cursing and then a booing a racket of vile hate
they wanted me with them and the whole avenue filled with hot sound
and more trucks came by slowly and it was an opera it was an
opera of condemnation, but i had not wanted war never will and
the gods the gods the dice had been good and i waved an arm
and smiled somebody screamed YOU BASTARD GET OFF YOUR
DEAD ASS !
but i did not i watched them go where they were going
i imagine the one who fainted he was in there too
we were all
very young i was young they were young
but i imagine
war being swine mob being swine
i was not as young as they
ants
I used to be a great
traveler, even without
money. some cities I’d say in 2
weeks, some 3 days…for years I went through the
cities, sometimes coming up against the same one
2 or 3 times.
now I’m here…not only the same city…
the same apartment…for ten years…
ten years…
the last person in here before me was
crazy, they carried her off
screaming
in a big white
sheet, and I moved
in.
it’s all right…there have been various
jobs, various women, various
ways…
one bungles through, it seems…
but it’s the ants here,
the ants here are crazy, they keep building nests
in the bathtub drain…in the water basin
drain…
it’s delicious and sanitary and ugly:
I turn on the hot water tap
and watch them go spinning to a
burning drowning hell…
it’s neat…
but they keep coming back…
more and more ants…
the ants come back faster than the women.
today I was about to do in a new
batch, both tub and water basin,
the phone rang,
it was my friend Danny. he said,
listen, you are the only real man I know. I’m
going to kill myself…
go, I said, ahead…
she left me, he said, she left me like that,
hardly any notice…I really loved
her. (he began to cry.)
listen, I said, meeting a bitch is an accident,
having one leave you is a basic reality,
be glad you’re coming up against
basic reality…
thanks, he said (sobbing), and hung
up.
I went back to the ants and turned on both water
taps at
once.
I burned and drowned them good.
Then the phone rang,
listen, he said, I’m going to do it,
I’m really going to do it.
I hung up.
he wrote in lonely blood
sitting here
typing
at a friend’s house
I find a black book by the typer:
Jeffers’: Be Angry at the Sun.
I think of Jeffers often,
of his rocks and his hawks and his
isolation.
Jeffers was a real loner.
yes, he had to write.
I try to think of loners who don’t break out
at all
in any fashion,
and I think, no, that’s not strong,
somehow, that’s dead.
Jeffers was alive and a loner and
he made his statements.
his rocks and his hawks and his isolation
counted.
he wrote in lonely blood
a man trapped in a corner
but what a corner
fighting down to the last mark
“I’ve built my rock,” he sent the message to
the lovely girl who came to his door,
“you go build yours.”
this was the same girl who had screwed Ezra,
and she wrote me that Jeffers sent her away
like that.
BE ANGRY AT THE SUN.
Jeffers was a rock who was not dead.
his book sits to my left now as I type.
I thin
k of all his people crashing down
hanging themselves, shooting themselves,
taking poisons…
locked away against an unbearable humanity.
Jeffers was like his people:
he demanded perfection and beauty
and it was not there
in human form. he found it in non-human
forms. I’ve run out of non-human forms,
I’m angry at Jeffers. no,
I’m not. and if the girl comes to my door
I’ll send her away too. after all,
who wants to follow old
Ez?
six chink fishermen
the other night
under a new moon
with the cuckoo clocks wound
tight
they stopped 6 Chinese fishermen
on skidrow
San Pedro
with 28 million dollars worth of
shit
in their boots.
they say it was an old dwarf
on a houseboat
who painted butterflies
on the sleeping body of his wife
in their pitiful
dream.
Artists, they say, sell out cheapest and most
quickly.
meanwhile, a fat man in Hong Kong
hearing,
decided to do away with Art,
and
while irritated
just to make Mr. Justice
soil his new clean sheets
he dialed a number
and arranged
the assassination of the
next-to-last
American
hero.
burning
and the pleasures of the past,
remembering the Goose Girl at Hollywood Park
1950,
red coats and trumpets
and faces cut with knives and mistakes;
I am ready for the final
retreat;
I have an old-time kerosene burner,
candles, 22 cans of Campbell’s soup
and an 80 year old uncle in Andernach,
Germany
who was once the burgermeister of that
town I was born in
so long ago.
I ache all over with the melody of pain
and people knock at my door
come in and drink with me
and talk,
but they don’t realize I’ve quit,
have cleaned up the kitchen
chased the mice out from under the bed
and am making ready
for the tallest flame of them all.
I look at buildings and clouds and ladies,
I read newspapers as my shoelaces break,
I dream of matadors brave and bulls brave
and people brave and cats brave and
can openers brave.
my uncle writes me in trembling hand:
“How is your little girl,
and is your health good? You didn’t answer
my last letter…”
“Dear Uncle Heinrich,” I answer,
“my little girl is very clever and pretty and
also good. I hope that you are
happy and well. I enclose a photo
of Marina. Answer when you are
able. Things here are the same as they
have always
been.
Love,
Henry”
a sound in the brush
the sorrow of Scibelli,
friend,
as he turned at a sound in the brush
and was bayonetted
by a man 5 feet tall who didn’t even know
his name,
who then sliced his jugular vein,
took the gold from his teeth,
both ears,
then opened his wallet
and tore up the photo of a soft-faced
girl named
simply, “Laura,”
who was waiting in Kansas City
for an earless, tooth-ravished
bloody
Scibelli
who just happened to die a little earlier
than most of the rest of us,
also for
Cause
Unknown.
the wild
once in lockup, being fingerprinted and photographed, all
that,
I dropped ashes from my cigarette on the floor
and the cop got mad, he said,
“by god, where the hell do you think you are?”
“County jail,” I said, and he said, “All right, wise guy, now you
walk down
that corridor and then
take a left.”
I walked on down
took my left and
here it came—
they had this beast of a thing
in a huge cellblock, alone, alone,
and there were wires across the bars
it was the L.A. County drunktank
and it was their pet
the thing saw me
came running
and threw itself snarling against the bars and wire
wanting to kill me, and I stood there and watched it,
then spoke:
“Cigarette? how about a smoke?”
the thing rattled the wire and snarled a few more times
and I pulled out a smoke.
the thing grinned at me and I poked a cigarette through the wire
put it in his lips and lit him
up.
“I dislike them too,” I said.
the thing grinned and bobbed its head
yes.
the cop came and took me away
and put me in a cell with
5 less living.
4th of july
it’s amazing
the number of people who can’t feel
pain.
put 40 in a room
squeezed against each other
hours of lethargic talk
and they don’t
faint
scream
go mad or even
wince.
it appears as if they are waiting for
something that will never
arrive.
they are as comfortable as chickens or
pigs in their pens.
one might even consider it wisdom
if you can overlook the faces
and the conversation.
when the 4th is over
and they go back to their separate holes
then the sun will kiss me hello
then the sidewalks will look good again.
back in their cages
they’ll dream of the next great
holiday.
probably Labor Day
smashing together on the freeways
talking together
40 in a room,
cousins, aunts, sisters, mothers, brothers, uncles,
sons, grandfathers, grandmothers, wives, husbands,
lovers, friends, all the rest,
40 in a room
talking about nothing,
talking about themselves.
carnival
he got drunk and went to sleep
in his bed
and the fire started
and he layed in there
burning
until a friend in the next room
smelled it
and ran in
and tried to pull him out of the fire
by his arms
and the skin rolled right off the arms
and he had to grab again
deeper
near the bone,
and he got him out and up
and the guy started screaming
and running blind,
he hit some walls
finally made 2 doorways
and with half a dozen men tr
ying
to hold him
he broke free
and ran into the yeard
screaming
still running
he ran right into some barbed wire
and tangled in the barbed wire
screaming
and they had to go up
and get him loose
from the wire
he lived for 3 nights and 3
days
drinking and smoking
are bad for the
health.
99 degrees
September after Labor Day,
99 degrees in Burbank, Calif.
I am looking at a fly
a small brown fly on a yellow curtain;
the Mexicans would be wise enough to sleep under trees
on a day like this
but Americans are stricken with ambition
they will survive as powerful and unhappy
neurotics,
right now my tax money is dropping bombs
on starving people in Asia
as I fight the small fly that has arrived from the
curtain by my elbow;
I swing and miss the fly,
neurotic American me,
the boys who pilot those planes are nice boys, gentle,
they kill apathetically
with honor and grace,
without hate.
I know one, he is now a prof who teaches American