week.”
then he slipped the poems back into the
manila envelope sealed it tossed it
on top of the pile for mailing
then he took the beer sat down next to his wife
on the couch
she was watching Johnny Carson
he watched
Carson was bad Carson knew he was bad but
he couldn’t do anything about
it.
the editor got up with his can of beer and
began walking up the
stairway.
“where are you going?” his wife
asked.
“to bed to sleep.”
“but it’s early.”
“god damn it I know that!”
“well you needn’t act that way
about it!”
he walked into the bedroom flicked on
the wall switch
there was a small bright flash and then
the overhead light burned
out.
he sat on the edge of the bed and finished his
beer in the
dark.
duck and forget it
today at the track
I was standing alone
looking down
when I saw these
two shoes
moving directly
toward
me
at once
I started into motion
toward my right
but he still caught part of
me:
“making any money
today?”
“yeah,” I answered and
was gone.
not too many years ago
I would have stood
there
while this slipped
soul
unloaded his
inanities on
me
pissing over my day
and my feelings
as he made me pay
for where he allowed
himself to be
in his mind
and in his
life.
no longer.
yet I am my brother’s
keeper.
I keep him
away.
snapshots at the track
I go to the men’s crapper
for a bowel
movement,
get up to flush.
what the hell.
something blood-dark
falls upon the
seat.
I’m 70, I
drink.
have been on my deathbed
twice.
I reach down for what has
fallen…
it’s a small burnt
potato chip
from my
lunch.
not yet…
damn thing fell from my
shirt…
I finish my toiletry,
go out and watch the
race.
my horse runs
second
chasing a 25-to-one
shot
to the
wire.
I don’t mind.
then I see this fellow
rushing toward me,
he always needs a
shave, his glasses seem
about to fall off
his face,
he knows me
and maybe I know
him.
“hey, Hank, Hank!”
we shake hands like two
lost souls.
“always good to see you,”
he says, “it refreshes
me, I know you lead a
hard life
just like I
do.”
“sure, kid, how you
doing?”
he tells me that he is
a big winner
then
rushes off.
the big board
overhead
flashes the first odds
on the next
race.
I check my program
decide to leave the
clubhouse,
try my luck in the
grandstand,
that’s where a hard-living
player belongs
anyhow,
right?
right.
x-idol
I never watch tv so I don’t know
but I’m told he was the leading man in a
long-running
series.
he does movie bits
now
I see him at the track almost every
day (“I used to have women coming out of
my ass,” he once informed me).
and people still remember him, call him
by name and my wife often asks me, “did
you see him today?”
“oh yes, he’s a gambling son of a bitch.”
the track is where you go when the other
action drops away.
he still looks like a celebrity, the way
he walks and talks and
I never meet him without feeling
good.
the toteboard flashes.
the sky shakes.
the mountains call us home.
heat wave
another one.
this night the people sit drunk or drugged or some of them
sit in front of their tv sets
slapped silly.
some few have air-conditioning.
the neighborhood dogs and cats flop about
waiting for a better time.
and I remember the cars along the freeway today
some of them stalled in the fast lane,
hoods up.
there are more murders in the heat
more domestic arguments.
Los Angeles has been burning for
weeks.
even the desperately lonely have not phoned
and that alone
makes all this almost
worthwhile:
those little mewling voices cooked into
silence
as I listen to the music of a long dead man
written in the 19th
century.
we ain’t got no money, honey, but we got rain
call it the greenhouse effect or whatever
but it just doesn’t rain like it
used to.
I particularly remember the rains of the
depression era.
there wasn’t any money but there was
plenty of rain.
it wouldn’t rain for just a night or
a day,
it would RAIN for 7 days and 7
nights
and in Los Angeles the storm drains
weren’t built to carry off that much
water
and the rain came down THICK and
MEAN and
STEADY
and you HEARD it banging against
the roofs and into the ground
waterfalls of it came down
from the roofs
and often there was HAIL
big ROCKS OF ICE
bombing
exploding
smashing into things
and the rain
just wouldn’t
STOP
and all the roofs leaked—
dishpans,
cooking pots
were placed all about;
they dripped loudly
and had to be emptied
again and
again
the rain came up over the street curbings,
across the lawns, climbed the steps and
entered the houses.
there were mops and bathroom towels,
and the rain often came up through the
toilets: bubbling, brown, crazy, whirlin
g,
and the old cars stood in the streets,
cars that had problems starting on a
sunny day,
and the jobless men stood
looking out the windows
at the old machines dying
like living things
out there.
the jobless men,
failures in a failing time
were imprisoned in their houses with their
wives and children
and their
pets.
the pets refused to go out
and left their waste in
strange places.
the jobless men went mad
confined with
their once beautiful wives.
there were terrible arguments
as notices of foreclosure
fell into the mailbox.
rain and hail, cans of beans,
bread without butter; fried
eggs, boiled eggs, poached
eggs; peanut butter
sandwiches, and an invisible
chicken
in every pot.
my father, never a good man
at best, beat my mother
when it rained
as I threw myself
between them,
the legs, the knees, the
screams
until they
separated.
“I’ll kill you,” I screamed
at him. “You hit her again
and I’ll kill you!”
“Get that son-of-a-bitching
kid out of here!”
“no, Henry, you stay with
your mother!”
all the households were under
siege but I believe that ours
held more terror than the
average.
and at night
as we attempted to sleep
the rains still came down
and it was in bed
in the dark
watching the moon against
the scarred window
so bravely
holding out
most of the rain,
I thought of Noah and the
Ark
and I thought, it has come
again.
we all thought
that.
and then, at once, it would
stop.
and it always seemed to
stop
around 5 or 6 a.m.,
peaceful then,
but not an exact silence
because things continued to
drip
drip
drip
and there was no smog then
and by 8 a.m.
there was a
blazing yellow sunlight,
Van Gogh yellow—
crazy, blinding!
and then
the roof drains
relieved of the rush of
water
began to expand in
the warmth:
PANG! PANG! PANG!
and everybody got up
and looked outside
and there were all the lawns
still soaked
greener than green will ever
be
and there were the birds
on the lawn
CHIRPING like mad,
they hadn’t eaten decently
for 7 days and 7 nights
and they were weary of
berries
and
they waited as the worms
rose to the top,
half-drowned worms.
the birds plucked them
up
and gobbled them
down; there were
blackbirds and sparrows.
the blackbirds tried to
drive the sparrows off
but the sparrows,
maddened with hunger,
smaller and quicker,
got their
due.
the men stood on their porches
smoking cigarettes,
now knowing
they’d have to go out
there
to look for that job
that probably wasn’t
there, to start that car
that probably wouldn’t
start.
and the once beautiful
wives
stood in their bathrooms
combing their hair,
applying makeup,
trying to put their world back
together again,
trying to forget that
awful sadness that
gripped them,
wondering what they could
fix for
breakfast.
and on the radio
we were told that
school was now
open.
and
soon
there I was
on the way to school,
massive puddles in the
street,
the sun like a new
world,
my parents back in that
house,
I arrived at my classroom
on time.
Mrs. Sorenson greeted us
with, “we won’t have our
usual recess, the grounds
are too wet.”
“AW!” most of the boys
went.
“but we are going to do
something special at
recess,” she went on,
“and it will be
fun!”
well, we all wondered
what that would
be
and the two hour wait
seemed a long time
as Mrs. Sorenson
went about
teaching her
lessons.
I looked at the little
girls, they all looked so
pretty and clean and
alert,
they sat still and
straight
and their hair was
beautiful
in the California
sunshine.
then the recess bell rang
and we all waited for the
fun.
then Mrs. Sorenson told
us:
“now, what we are going to
do is we are going to tell
each other what we did
during the rainstorm!
we’ll begin in the front
row and go right around!
now, Michael, you’re
first!…”
well, we all began to tell
our stories, Michael began
and it went on and on,
and soon we realized that
we were all lying, not
exactly lying but mostly
lying and some of the boys
began to snicker and some
of the girls began to give
them dirty looks and
Mrs. Sorenson said,
“all right, I demand a
modicum of silence
here!
I am interested in what
you did
during the rainstorm
even if you
aren’t!”
so we had to tell our
stories and they were
stories.
one girl said that
when the rainbow first
came
she saw God’s face
at the end of it.
only she didn’t say
which end.
one boy said he stuck
his fishing pole
out the window
and caught a little
fish
and fed it to his
cat.
almost everybody told
a lie.
&n
bsp; the truth was just
too awful and
embarrassing to
tell.
then the bell rang
and recess was
over.
“thank you,” said Mrs.
Sorenson, “that was very
nice
and tomorrow the grounds
will be dry
and we will put them
to use
again.”
most of the boys
cheered
and the little girls
sat very straight and
still,
looking so pretty and
clean and
alert,
their hair beautiful
in a sunshine that
the world might
never see
again.
crime and punishment
Mr. Sanderson was the principal of
my high school
and it seemed that much
of the time
I was in Mr. Sanderson’s
office
and I had no idea
why.
the teacher would send me down
with a sealed
envelope.
Mr. Sanderson would open the
envelope