that I have known the dead and now I’m

  dying

  dying

  I have known the dead

  here on earth

  and elsewhere;

  alone now,

  alone then,

  alone.

  are you drinking?

  washed-up, on shore, the old yellow notebook

  out again

  I write from the bed

  as I did last

  year.

  will see the doctor,

  Monday.

  “yes, doctor, weak legs, vertigo, head-aches

  and my back

  hurts.”

  “are you drinking?” he will ask.

  “are you getting your

  exercise, your

  vitamins?”

  I think that I am just ill

  with life, the same stale yet

  fluctuating

  factors.

  even at the track

  I watch the horses run by

  and it seems

  meaningless.

  I leave early after buying tickets on the

  remaining races.

  “taking off?” asks the mutuel

  clerk.

  “yes, it’s boring,”

  I tell him.

  “if you think it’s boring

  out there,” he tells me, “you oughta be

  back here.”

  so here I am

  propped against my pillows

  again

  just an old guy

  just an old writer

  with a yellow

  notebook.

  something is

  walking across the

  floor

  toward

  me.

  oh, it’s just

  my cat

  this

  time.

  “D”

  the doctor is into collecting art

  and the magazines in his waiting room

  are Artsy

  have thick covers, glistening pages,

  and large color

  photos.

  the receptionist calls my name and

  I’m led into a waiting room with

  walls adorned with paintings

  and a chart of the human

  body.

  the doctor enters: “how are you

  doing?”

  not well, I think, or I wouldn’t

  be here.

  “now,” he goes on, “I am surprised

  by the biopsy, I didn’t expect

  this…”

  the doctor is a bald, well-scrubbed

  pink fellow.

  “I can almost always tell just by

  looking; this time, I

  missed…”

  he paused.

  “go on,” I say.

  “all right, let’s say there are

  4 types of cancer—A, B, C, D.

  well, you’ve got

  D.

  and if I had cancer I’d rather

  have your kind:

  D.”

  the doctor is in a tough business

  but the pay is

  good.

  “well,” he says, “we’ll just burn it off,

  o.k.?”

  I stretch out on the table and he has an

  instrument, I can feel the heat of it

  searing through the air

  but also

  I hear a whirring sound

  like a drill.

  “it’ll be over in a

  blink…”

  the small growth is just inside of

  the right nostril.

  the instrument touches it

  and

  the room is filled with the smell

  of burning flesh.

  then he stops.

  then he starts

  again.

  there is pain but it’s sharp and

  centered.

  he stops

  again.

  “now we are going to do it

  once more to

  clean it

  up.”

  he applies the instrument

  again.

  this time I feel the most

  pain.

  “there now…”

  it’s finished, no bandage needed,

  it’s

  cauterized.

  then I’m at the receptionist’s

  desk, she makes out a bill, I

  pay with my

  Mastercard, am out the door,

  down the stairway and there

  in the parking lot

  awaits

  my faithful automobile.

  It’s a day with a great deal of

  afternoon left

  I light a cigarette, start the

  car and

  get the hell

  out of there

  moving toward something

  else.

  in the bottom

  in the bottom of the hour

  lurks

  the smoking claw

  the red train

  the letter home

  the deep-fried blues.

  in the bottom of the hour

  lurks

  the song you sang together

  the mouse in the attic

  the train window in the rain

  the whiskey breath on grandfather

  the coolness of the jail trustee.

  in the bottom of the hour

  lurks

  the famous gone quite stupid

  churches with peeling white paint

  lovers who chose hyenas

  schoolgirls giggling at atrophy

  the suicide oceans of night.

  in the bottom of the hour

  lurks

  button eyes in a cardboard face

  dead library books squeezed upright.

  in the bottom of the hour

  lurks

  the octopus

  Gloria gone mad while shaving her armpits

  the gang wars

  no toilet paper at all in a train station restroom

  a flat tire halfway to Vegas.

  in the bottom of the hour

  lurks

  the dream of the barmaid as the perfect girl

  the first and only home run

  the father sitting in the bathroom with the door open

  the brave and quick death

  the gang rape in the Fun House.

  in the bottom of the hour

  lurks

  the wasp in the spider web

  the plumbers moving to Malibu

  the death of the mother like a bell that never rang

  the absence of wise old men.

  in the bottom of the hour

  lurks

  Mozart

  fast food joints where the price of a bad meal exceeds the hourly wage

  angry women and deluded men and faded children

  the housecat

  love as a swordfish.

  in the bottom of the hour

  lurks

  17,000 people screaming at a homerun

  millions laughing at the obvious jokes of a tv comedian

  the long and hideous wait in the welfare offices

  Cleopatra fat and insane

  Beethoven in the grave.

  in the bottom of the hour

  lurks

  the damnation of Faust and sexual intercourse

  the sad-eyed dogs of summer lost in the streets

  the last funeral

  Celine failing again

  the carnation in the buttonhole of the kindly killer.

  in the bottom of the hour

  lurks

  fantasies tainted with milk

  our obnoxious invasion of the planets

  Chatterton drinking rat poison

  the bull that should have killed Hemingway

  Paris like a pimple in the sky.

  in the bottom of the hour

  lurks

  th
e mad writer in a cork room

  the falseness of the Senior Prom

  the submarine with purple footprints.

  in the bottom of the hour

  lurks

  the tree that cries in the night

  the place that nobody found

  being so young you thought you could change it

  being middle-aged and thinking you could survive it

  being old and thinking you could hide from it.

  in the bottom of the hour

  lurks

  2:30 a.m.

  and the next to last line

  and then the last.

  the creative act

  for the broken egg on the floor

  for the 5th of July

  for the fish in the tank

  for the old man in room 9

  for the cat on the fence

  for yourself

  not for fame

  not for money

  you’ve got to keep chopping

  as you get older

  the glamour recedes

  it’s easier when you’re young

  anybody can rise to the

  heights now and then

  the buzzword is

  consistency

  anything that keeps it

  going

  this life dancing in front of

  Mrs. Death.

  a suborder of naked buds

  the uselessness of the word is

  evident.

  I would like to make

  this

  piece of paper

  shriek and dance and

  laugh

  but

  the keys just

  strike it harmlessly

  and

  we settle

  for just a fraction of

  the whole.

  this incompleteness is all

  we have:

  we write the same things

  over and over

  again.

  we are fools,

  driven.

  the uselessness of the word is

  evident.

  writers can only pretend to

  succeed

  some pretend well, others

  not so

  yet

  none of us come

  near

  none of us even

  close

  sitting at these

  machines

  behooved to

  live

  out

  our indecent

  profession.

  companion

  I am not alone.

  he’s here now.

  sometimes I think he’s

  gone

  then he

  flies back

  in the morning or at

  noon or in the

  night.

  a bird no one wants.

  he’s mine.

  my bird of pain.

  he doesn’t sing.

  that bird

  swaying on the

  bough.

  you know and I know and thee know

  that as the yellow shade rips

  as the cat leaps wild-eyed

  as the old bartender leans on the wood

  as the hummingbird sleeps

  you know and I know and thee know

  as the tanks practice on false battlefields

  as your tires work the freeway

  as the midget drunk on cheap bourbon cries alone at night

  as the bulls are carefully bred for the matadors

  as the grass watches you and the trees watch you

  as the sea holds creatures vast and true

  you know and I know and thee know

  the sadness and the glory of two slippers under a bed

  the ballet of your heart dancing with your blood

  young girls of love who will someday hate their mirrors

  overtime in hell

  lunch with sick salad

  you know and I know and thee know

  the end as we know it now

  it seems such a lousy trick after the lousy agony but

  you know and I know and thee know

  the joy that sometimes comes along out of nowhere

  rising like a falcon moon across the impossibility

  you know and I know and thee know

  the cross-eyed craziness of total elation

  we know that we finally have not been cheated

  you know and I know and thee know

  as we look at our hands our feet our lives our way

  the sleeping hummingbird

  the murdered dead of armies

  the sun that eats you as you face it

  you know and I know and thee know

  we will defeat death.

  the sun slants in like a golden sword as the odds grow shorter

  show biz

  I can’t have it

  and you can’t have it

  and we won’t

  get it

  so don’t bet on it

  or even think about

  it

  just get out of bed

  each morning

  wash

  shave

  clothe

  yourself

  and go out into

  it

  because

  outside of that

  all that’s left is

  suicide and

  madness

  so you just

  can’t

  expect too much

  you can’t even

  expect

  so what you do

  is

  work from a modest

  minimal

  base

  like when you

  walk outside

  be glad your car

  might possibly

  be there

  and if it is—

  that the tires

  aren’t

  flat

  then you get

  in

  and if it

  starts—you

  start.

  and

  it’s the damndest

  movie

  you’ve ever

  seen

  because

  you’re

  in it—

  low budget

  and

  4 billion

  critics

  and the longest

  run

  you ever hope

  for

  is

  one

  day.

  darkness & ice

  I am spooked by the bluebells and the silent harp while

  passing down Western Avenue and seeing the tombstones

  placed flat instead of upright upon the cemetery lawn: our decent

  modernity not wanting to upset us with Finalities while we

  pay 22% interest on our credit cards.

  I follow the street on down

  feeling wonderful that I do not appear to be lost.

  we need our landmarks (like cemeteries), we need our

  liquor and our liabilities.

  we need so many things we think we do not

  need.

  strangely then, as I drive south, I begin thinking about

  THE WORLD IS SQUARE, INC., an institution which meets and

  discusses the fact that: the world is square and the North Pole is at

  the CENTER of the SQUARE and holds everything from sliding

  over the edge and that the EDGE is really a WALL OF

  DARKNESS AND ICE and that nothing or nobody can go through

  and that

  when we THINK we are circling the globe we are only

  CIRCLING the SQUARE, finally arriving back

  where we began.

  I wait at a signal, the light turns green and I move on

  thinking, well, maybe the planets we believe are round are

  illusions, and the moon and the sun, they are really square

  too.

  well, you can’
t rule anything out; I vote for round

  but I still realize that it wasn’t too long ago when

  EVERYBODY thought the answer was SQUARE.