thinking about a little girl I had seen
on a red bicycle about a week ago.
then I took a bath and put on my green
terrycloth robe just in time to get the fights
on tv from the Olympic.
there was a black and a Chicano in there.
that always made a good fight.
and it was a good idea too:
put them in there and let them kill each
other.
I watched the whole fight
thinking about the redhead all the time.
I think the Chicano won
but I’m not sure.
liberty
she was sitting in the window
of room 1010 at the Chelsea
in New York,
Janis Joplin’s old room.
it was 104 degrees
and she was on speed
and had one leg over
the sill,
and she leaned out and said,
“God, this is great!”
and then she slipped
and almost went out,
just catching herself.
it was very close.
she pulled herself in
walked over and stretched
on the bed.
I’ve lost a lot of women
in a lot of different ways
but that would have been
the first time
that way.
then she rolled off the bed
landed on her back
and when I walked over
she was asleep.
all day she had been wanting
to see the Statue of Liberty.
now she wouldn’t worry me about that
for a while.
don’t touch the girls
she’s up seeing my doctor
trying to get some diet pills;
she’s not fat, she needs the speed.
I go down to the nearest bar and wait.
at 3:30 in the afternoon of a tuesday.
they have a dancer.
there’s only one other man in the bar.
she works out
looking at herself in the mirror.
she’s like a monkey
dark
Korean.
she’s not very good,
skinny and obvious
and she sticks her tongue out at me
then at the other man.
times must be truly hard, I think.
I have a few more beers then get up to leave.
she waves me over.
“you go?” she asks.
“yes,” I say, “my wife has cancer.”
I shake her hand.
she points to a sign behind her:
DON’T TOUCH THE GIRLS.
she points to the sign and says,
“the sign says, ‘DON’T TOUCH THE GIRLS’.”
I go back to the parking lot and wait.
she comes out.
“did you get the pills?” I ask.
“yes,” she says.
“then it’s been a successful day.”
I think of the dancer walking across my
kitchen. I can’t visualize it. I am going
to die alone
just the way I live.
“take me to my place,” she says,
“I’ve got to get ready for night school.”
“sure,” I say and drive her on in.
dark shades
I never wear dark shades
but this red head went to get
a prescription filled on Hollywood Blvd.
and she kept haggling and working at
me, snapping and snarling.
I left her at the prescription counter
and walked around and got a large tube of
Crest and a giant bottle of Joy.
then I walked up to
the dark shade display rack and bought
the most vicious pair of shades
I could find.
we paid for our things
walked down to a Mexican place
and she ordered a taco she couldn’t eat
and sat there
haggling and snapping and snarling at me
and after eating I ordered 3 beers
drank them down
then put on my shades.
“o my God,” she said, “o my God shit!”
and I ripped her up both sides
most excellent riposte
snarling stinking marmalade shots
shit blows
farts from hell,
then I got up
paid
she following me out
both of us in shades
and the sidewalks split.
we found her car
got in and drove off
me sitting there
pushing the shades back against my nose
ripping out her backbone
and waving it out the window
like a broken Confederate flagpole…
dark and vicious shades help.
“o my God shit!” she said,
and the sun was up
and I didn’t know it.
they were a bargain for $4.25
even though I had left the Crest
and the Joy behind
at the taco place.
prayer in bad weather
by God, I don’t know what to
do.
they’re so nice to have around.
they have a way of playing with
the balls
and looking at the cock very
seriously
turning it
tweeking it
examining each part
as their long hair falls on
your belly.
it’s not the fucking and sucking
alone that reaches into a man
and softens him, it’s the extras,
it’s all the extras.
now it’s raining tonight
and there’s nobody
they are elsewhere
examining things
in new bedrooms
in new moods
or maybe in old
bedrooms.
anyhow, it’s raining tonight,
one hell of a dashing, pouring
rain….
very little to do.
I’ve read the newspaper
paid the gas bill
the electric co.
the phone bill.
it keeps raining.
they soften a man
and then let him swim
in his own juice.
I need an old-fashioned whore
at the door tonight
closing her green umbrella,
drops of moonlit rain on her
purse, saying, “shit, man,
can’t you get better music
than that on your radio?
and turn up the heat…”
it’s always when a man’s swollen
with love and everything
else
that it keeps raining
splattering
flooding
rain
good for the trees and the
grass and the air…
good for things that
live alone.
I would give anything
for a female’s hand on me
tonight.
they soften a man and
then leave him
listening to the rain.
melancholia
the history of melancholia
includes all of us.
me, I writhe in dirty sheets
while staring at blue walls
and nothing.
I have gotten so used to melancholia
that
I greet it like an old
friend.
I will now do 15 minutes of grieving
for the lost redhead,
/>
I tell the gods.
I do it and feel quite bad
quite sad,
then I rise
CLEANSED
even though nothing is
solved.
that’s what I get for kicking
religion in the ass.
I should have kicked the redhead
in the ass
where her brains and her bread and
butter are
at…
but, no, I’ve felt sad
about everything:
the lost redhead was just another
smash in a lifelong
loss…
I listen to drums on the radio now
and grin.
there is something wrong with me
besides
melancholia.
a stethoscope case
my doctor has just come into his office
from surgery.
he meets me in the men’s john.
“God damn,” he says to me,
“where did you find her? oh, I just like
to look at girls like that!”
I tell him: “it’s my specialty: cement
hearts and beautiful bodies. If you can find
a heart-beat, let me know.”
“I’ll take good care of her,” he says.
“yes, and please remember all the ethical
codes of your honorable profession,” I tell
him.
he zips up first then washes.
“how’s your health?” he asks.
“physically I’m sound as a tic. mentally I’m
wasted, doomed, on my tiny cross, all that
crap.”
“I’ll take good care of her.”
“yes. and let me know about the heart-beat.”
he walks out.
I finish, zip up and also walk out.
only I don’t wash up.
I’m far beyond all that.
eat your heart out
I’ve come by, she says, to tell you
that this is it. I’m not kidding, it’s
over. this is it.
I sit on the couch watching her arrange
her long red hair before my bedroom
mirror.
she pulls her hair up and
piles it on top of her head—
she lets her eyes look at
my eyes—
then she drops the hair and
lets it fall down in front of her face.
we go to bed and I hold her
speechlessly from the back
my arm around her neck
I touch her wrists and hands
feel up to
her elbows
no further.
she gets up.
this is it, she says,
eat your heart out. You
got any rubber bands?
I don’t know.
here’s one, she says,
this will do. well,
I’m going.
I get up and walk her
to the door
just as she leaves
she says,
I want you to buy me
some high-heeled shoes
with tall thin spikes,
black high-heeled shoes.
no, I want them
red.
I watch her walk down the cement walk
under the trees
she walks all right and
as the poinsettas drip in the sun
I close the door.
the retreat
this time has finished me.
I feel like the German troops
whipped by snow and the communists
walking bent
with newspapers stuffed into
worn boots.
my plight is just as terrible.
maybe more so.
victory was so close
victory was there.
as she stood before my mirror
younger and more beautiful than
any woman I had ever known
combing yards and yards of red hair
as I watched her.
and when she came to bed
she was more beautiful than ever
and the love was very very good.
eleven months.
now she’s gone
gone as they go.
this time has finished me.
it’s a long road back
and back to where?
the guy ahead of me
falls.
I step over him.
did she get him too?
I made a mistake
I reached up into the top of the closet
and took out a pair of blue panties
and showed them to her and
asked “are these yours?”
and she looked and said,
“no, those belong to a dog.”
she left after that and I haven’t seen
her since. she’s not at her place.
I keep going there, leaving notes stuck
into the door. I go back and the notes
are still there. I take the Maltese cross
cut it down from my car mirror, tie it
to her doorknob with a shoelace, leave
a book of poems.
when I go back the next night everything
is still there.
I keep searching the streets for that
blood-wine battleship she drives
with a weak battery, and the doors
hanging from broken hinges.
I drive around the streets
an inch away from weeping,
ashamed of my sentimentality and
possible love.
a confused old man driving in the rain
wondering where the good luck
went.
popular melodies
in the last of
your mind
girls in pantyhose
schoolgirls in pantyhose
sitting on bus stop benches
looking tired at 13
with their raspberry lipstick.
it’s hot in the sun
and the day at school has been
dull, and going home is
dull, and
I drive by in my car
peering at their warm legs.
their eyes look
away—
they’ve been warned
about ruthless and horny old
studs; they’re just not going
to give it away like that.
and yet it’s dull
waiting out the minutes on
the bench and the years at
home, and the books they
carry are dull and the food
they eat is dull, and even
the ruthless, horny old studs
are dull.
the girls in pantyhose wait,
they await the proper time and
moment, and then they will move
and then they will conquer.
I drive around in my car
peeking up their legs
pleased that I will never be
part of their heaven and
their hell. but that scarlet
lipstick on those sad waiting
mouths! it would be nice to
kiss each of them once, fully,
then give them back.
but the bus will
get them first.
up your yellow river
a woman told a man
when he got off a plane
that I was dead.
a magazine printed
the fact that I was dead
and somebody else said
that they’d heard that I
was dead, and then somebody
wrote an article and said
our Rimbaud our Villon is
dead. at the same time an old
drinking buddy publis
hed
a piece stating that I
could no longer write. a
real Judas job. they can’t
wait for me to go, these
farts. well, I’m listening
to Tchaikovsky’s piano
concerto number one and
the announcer said Mahler’s
5th and 10th symphonies
are coming up via
Amsterdam,
and the beerbottles are
on the floor and ash
from my cigarettes
covers my cotton underwear
and my gut, I’ve
told all my girlfriends to