The Last Night of the Earth Poems
as the boxers
went back
sat on their
stools
and were
swabbed by
listless
cornermen.
we were all
in hell
all of us
and I
got up
and left
that time.
between races
I know that I’m not supposed to bother
you, he said.
you’ve got that right, I
answered.
but, he went on, I want to tell you
that I was up all night
reading your
latest book.
I’ve read all your
books.
I work in the
post office.
oh, I said.
and I want to interview you for
our newspaper.
no, I said, no
interview.
why? he asked.
I’m tired of interviews, they have
nothing to do with
anything.
listen, he went on, I’ll make it
easy for you, I’ll come to your
house or I’ll buy you dinner at
Musso’s.
no, thank you, I said.
look, the interview isn’t really for
our paper, it’s for
me, I’m a writer and I want to get
out of the post
office.
listen, I said, just pull up a chair
and sit down at your
typewriter.
no interview? he asked.
no, I answered.
he walked
off.
they were coming out on the track
for the next race.
talking to the young man had
made me feel
bad.
they thought that writing had
something to do with
the politics of the
thing.
they were simply not
crazy enough
in the head
to sit down to a
typer
and let the words bang
out.
they didn’t want to
write
they wanted to
succeed at
writing.
I got up to make
my bet.
no use letting a little
conversation
ruin your
day.
splashing
dumb,
Jesus Christ,
some people are so dumb
you can hear them
splashing around
in their dumbness
as their eyes
look out of their
heads.
they have
most of their
parts: hands, feet,
ears, legs, elbows,
intestines, fingernails,
noses and so
forth
but
there’s nothing
there
yet
they are able to
speak,
form sentences—
but what
comes out
of their mouths
are the stalest
concepts, the most
warped beliefs,
they are the repository
of all the obvious
stupidities
they have
stuffed
themselves
with
and it hurts me
to
look at them
to
listen to them,
I want to
run and hide
I want to
escape their engulfing
nullity
there is no
horror movie
worse,
no murder
as
unsolved
but
the world
goes on
and
they
go on
dumbly
slamming
my guts to
pieces.
darkling
some nights you don’t sleep.
of course
having 3 or 4 cats on the bed
doesn’t help.
my wife likes to carry them up
from downstairs
but
it’s not always the cats, it’s
hardly anything,
say,
re-working horse systems in my
brain, or it’s a cold moon, an
itchy back, the
thought of death out
there
beyond the venetian blinds
or
I’ll think nice things about my
wife, she looks so small there
under the blanket, a little
lump, that’s all
(death, you take me first, please,
this lady needs a gentle space of
peace
without me).
then a boat horn blows from the
harbor.
I pull my head up, stretching
my thick neck, I see the
clock:
3:36 a.m.
that always does it: looking at
the clock.
by 3:45 a.m. I am asleep, just
like the cats, just like my
wife,
the venetian blinds closing us
all in.
Celine with cane and basket
tonight I am nothing
I have lost touch with the walls
I have seen too many heads, hands, feet,
heard too many voices,
I am weary with the continuation,
the music is old music,
there is no stirring in the air.
on my wall is a photo of
Celine,
he has a cane,
carries a basket,
wears a coat too heavy,
a long strand of hair falls across his face,
he has been stunned by life,
the dogs have had at him,
it got to be too much
much too much.
he walks through a small forest,
this doctor,
this typer of words,
all he wants to do is die,
that’s all he wants,
and his photo is on the wall
and he is dead.
this year
1988
all these months
have had
a terribleness to them
that I have never felt
before.
I light a cigarette and
wait.
no more, no less
editor, critic, bigot, wit:
what do you expect of me
now that my youth has
flown and even my middle
age is
gone?
I expect what I’ve always
expected:
the hard-driven line
and a bit of help
from the
gods.
as the walls get closer
there should be more to
say
instead of
less.
each day is still a
hammer,
a flower.
editor, critic, bigot, wit:
the grave has no
mirror
and I am still this
machine
this paper
and all the
etceteras.
the lost and the desperate
it was nice to be a boy in a dark movie house,
one entered the dream so much more easily
then.
I liked the
French Foreign Legion movies
best and there were many of them
then.
I loved the forts and the sand and the
lost and desperate men.
these men were brave and they had beautiful
eyes.
I never saw men like that
in my neighborhood.
the neighborhood men were hunched and
miserable and angry and
cowardly.
I was going to join the French Foreign Legion.
I sat in the dark movie houses and I was
one of them.
we had been fighting for days without food
and with very little
water.
casualties had been horrendous.
our fort was surrounded, we were down to a
last few.
we propped up our dead comrades with
their rifles pointed toward the
desert
to make the Arabs think that they had not
killed many of us
otherwise we would have been
overwhelmed.
we ran from dead man to dead man
firing their rifles.
our sergeant was wounded
3 or 4 times but
he still commanded
screaming his orders.
then more of us died gallantly, then
we were down to the last two
(one of them the sergeant) but we
fought on, then we were out of
ammunition, the Arabs scaled the walls
on ladders and we knocked them back
with our rifle butts but more and more of
them were clambering over the walls, there
were too many
of them we were
finished, no chance, then there was the sound of a
BUGLE!
reinforcements were arriving!
fresh and rested upon the backs of thunderous
horses!
they charged en masse over the sand,
hundreds of them
dressed in bright and blazing uniforms.
the Arabs scattered down the walls
running for their horses and their
lives
but most of them were
doomed.
then the sergeant, knowing victory, was dying
in my arms.
“Chinaski,” he said to me, “the fort is
ours!”
he gave a small smile, his head fell back and
he was gone.
then I was home again
I was back in my room.
a hunched, miserable and angry man
walked into the room and said,
“get out there now and mow the lawn.
I see a hair of grass sticking up!”
out there in the yard
I pushed the mower over the same grass
once more
back and forth
back and forth
wondering why all the brave men with
beautiful eyes were so far away,
wondering if they’d still be there
when I arrived.
the bully
actually, I do think that
my father was
insane,
the way he drove his
car,
honking,
cursing at people;
the way he got into
violent arguments
in public places
over the most
trivial incidents;
the way he beat
his only child
almost daily
upon the slightest
provocation.
of course, bullies
sometimes meet their
masters.
I remember once
entering the house
and my mother
told me,
“your father was
in a terrible
fight.”
I looked for him,
found him sitting
on the toilet
with the bathroom
door
open.
his face was a mass of
bruises, welts,
puffed and black
eyes.
he even had a broken
arm
in a cast.
I was 13 years old.
I stood looking
at him.
I looked for
some time.
then he screamed,
“what the hell you
staring at!
what’s your
problem?”
I looked at him
some more,
then walked
off.
it was to be
3 years later
that
I would knock him
on his
ass, no problem
with that
at
all.
downers
some people
grind away
making their
unhappiness
the ultimate
factor
of their
existence
until
finally
they are
just
automatically
unhappy,
their
suspicious
upset
snarling
selves
grinding
on
and
at
and
for
and
through
their only
relief
being
to meet
another
unhappy
person
or
to
create
one.
get close enough and you can’t see
at this time
I know a couple of men
who seem to be in
love
while their ladies are treating
them
off-handedly or
worse.
these men are consumed by
their
ill-fate, can’t
climb out of their
fix.
I too
have been in that
way,
only I was
worse
off:
I was charmed and
ensnared by
caseic beldames,
slimey slatterns,
inchoate prostitutes,
hypacodont
mesdames—
all the hustling
shrews of the
universe
found me,
and I
found them
wise
witty and
beautiful
then.
it was only after
some luck of
distance and time
that I was able to
realize
that
these ladies
were even less than
less.
so
now
when these men
tell me their sad
stories
there is nothing I can
say
because to me
their women look
like
hypacodont
beldames,
inchoate
slatterns,
caseic
mesdames
and
slimey
prostitutes,
not to mention
piss-biting
shrews
and they
most
probably
are.
true is true
enough,
yet
at small
tiny and
rare
moments
I wonder
what
I seemed
like
to my
ladies?
the beggars
the poor
in the grandstand section
playing the
daily doubles
the exactas
the pick-6’s
the pick-9’s
they have horrible
jobs
or
no jobs
they come in
beaten
to take another
beating.
scuffed shoes
shirts with buttons
missing,
faded and wrinkled
clothing—
muted eyes,
they are the
unwashed
the
unwanted
the beggars of the
grandstand
and as race after race
unfolds
they are routinely
sucked of
money and
hope
then
the last race is
over
and for a few