I had this room in front on DeLongpre
and I used to sit for hours
in the daytime
looking out the front
window.
there were any number of girls who would
walk by
swaying;
it helped my afternoons,
added something to the beer and the
cigarettes.
one day I saw something
extra.
I heard the sound of it first.
“come on, push!” he said.
there was a long board
about 2½ feet wide and
8 feet long;
nailed to the ends and in the middle
were roller skates.
he was pulling in front
two long ropes attached to the board
and she was in back
guiding and also pushing.
all their possessions were tied to the
board:
pots, pans, bedquilts, and so forth
were roped to the board
tied down;
and the skatewheels were grinding.
he was white, red-necked, a
southerner—
thin, slumped, his pants about to
fall from his
ass—
his face pinked by the sun and
cheap wine,
and she was black
and walked upright
pushing;
she was simply beautiful
in turban
long green ear rings
yellow dress
from
neck to
ankle.
her face was gloriously
indifferent.
“don’t worry!” he shouted, looking back
at her, “somebody will
rent us a place!”
she didn’t answer.
then they were gone
although I still heard the
skatewheels.
they’re going to make it,
I thought.
I’m sure they
did.
in a neighborhood of murder
the roaches spit out
paperclips
and the helicopter circles and circles
smelling for blood
searchlights leering down into our
bedroom
5 guys in this court have pistols
another a
machete
we are all murderers and
alcoholics
but there are worse in the hotel
across the street
they sit in the green and white doorway
banal and depraved
waiting to be institutionalized
here we each have a small green plant
in the window
and when we fight with our women at 3 a.m.
we speak
softly
and on each porch
is a small dish of food
always eaten by morning
we presume
by the
cats.
private first class
they took my man off the street
the other day
he wore an L.A. Rams sweatshirt with
the sleeves cut
off
and under that
an army shirt
private first class
and he wore a green beret
walked very straight
he was black in brown walking shorts
hair dyed blonde
he never bothered anybody
he stole a few babies
and ran off cackling
but he always returned the infants
unharmed
he slept in the back of the
Love Parlor
the girls let him.
compassion is found in
strange places.
one day I didn’t see him
then another.
I asked around.
my taxes are going to go up
again. the state’s got to
house and feed
him. the cops took him
in. no
good.
love is a dog from hell
feet of cheese
coffeepot soul
hands that hate poolsticks
eyes like paperclips
I prefer red wine
I am bored on airliners
I am docile during earthquakes
I am sleepy at funerals
I puke at parades
and am sacrificial at chess
and cunt and caring
I smell urine in churches
I can no longer read
I can no longer sleep
eyes like paperclips
my green eyes
I prefer white wine
my box of rubbers is getting
stale
I take them out
Trojan-Enz
lubricated
for greater sensitivity
I take them out
and put three of them on
the walls of my bedroom are blue
Linda where did you go?
Katherine where did you go?
(and Nina went to England)
I have toenail clippers
and Windex glass cleaner
green eyes
blue bedroom
bright machinegun sun
this whole thing is like a seal
caught on oily rocks
and circled by the Long Beach Marching Band
at 3:36 p.m.
there is a ticking behind me
but no clock
I feel something crawling along
the left side of my nose:
memories of airliners
my mother had false teeth
my father had false teeth
and every Saturday of their lives
they took up all the rugs in their house
waxed the hardwood floors
and covered them with rugs again
and Nina is in England
and Irene is on ATD
and I take my green eyes
and lay down in my blue bedroom.
my groupie
I read last Saturday in the
redwoods outside of Santa Cruz
and I was about 3/4’s finished
when I heard a long high scream
and a quite attractive
young girl came running toward me
long gown & divine eyes of fire
and she leaped up on the stage
and screamed: “I WANT YOU!
I WANT YOU! TAKE ME! TAKE
ME!”
I told her, “look, get the hell
away from me.”
but she kept tearing at my
clothing and throwing herself
at me.
“where were you,” I
asked her, “when I was living
on one candy bar a day and
sending short stories to the
Atlantic Monthly?”
she grabbed my balls and almost
twisted them off. her kisses
tasted like shitsoup.
2 women jumped up on the stage
and
carried her off into the
woods.
I could still hear her screams
as I began the next poem.
maybe, I thought, I should have
taken her on the stage in front
of all those eyes.
but one can never be sure
whether it’s good poetry or
bad acid.
now, if you were teaching creative writing, he asked, what would you tell them?
I’d tell them to have an unhappy love
affair, hemorrhoids, bad teeth
and to drink cheap wine,
avoid opera and golf and chess,
to keep switching the head of their
bed from wall to wall
and then I’d tell them to have
another unhappy love affair
and never to use a silk typewriter
ribbon,
avoid family picnics
or being photographed in a rose
garden;
read Hemingway only once,
skip Faulkner
ignore Gogol
stare at photos of Gertrude Stein
and read Sherwood Anderson in bed
while eating Ritz crackers,
realize that people who keep
talking about sexual liberation
are more frightened than you are.
listen to E. Power Biggs work the
organ on your radio while you’re
rolling Bull Durham in the dark
in a strange town
with one day left on the rent
after having given up
friends, relatives and jobs.
never consider yourself superior and/
or fair
and never try to be.
have another unhappy love affair.
watch a fly on a summer curtain.
never try to succeed.
don’t shoot pool.
be righteously angry when you
find your car has a flat tire.
take vitamins but don’t lift weights or jog.
then after all this
reverse the procedure.
have a good love affair.
and the thing
you might learn
is that nobody knows anything—
not the State, nor the mice
the garden hose or the North Star.
and if you ever catch me
teaching a creative writing class
and you read this back to me
I’ll give you a straight A
right up the pickle
barrel.
the good life
a house with 7 or 8 people
living in it
getting up the rent.
there’s a stereo never used
and a set of bongos
never used
and there are rugs over the
windows
and you smoke
as the living roaches
stumble over buttons on your
shirt and tumble
off.
it’s dark and somebody sends
out for food. you eat the food
and sleep. everybody sleeps at
once: on floors, coffeetables,
couches, beds, in bathtubs. there’s
even one in the brush outside.
then somebody wakes up and
says, “come on, let’s roll
one!”
a few others wake up.
“sure. yea. o.k.”
“all right. come on, somebody
roll a couple. let’s get it
on!”
“yeah! Let’s get it on!”
we smoke a few joints and then
we’re asleep again
except we reverse positions:
bathtub to couch, coffeetable to
rug, bed to floor, and a new one
falls into the brush
outside, and they haven’t yet
found Patty Hearst and Tim doesn’t
want to speak to
Allan.
the Greek
the guy in the front court can’t
speak English, he’s Greek, a
rather stupid-looking and
fairly ugly man.
now my landlord does some painting,
it’s not very good.
he showed the Greek one of his paintings.
the Greek went out and purchased
paper, brushes, paints.
the Greek started painting in his front
court. he leaves the paintings outside to
dry.
the Greek had never painted before—
here it comes:
a blue guitar
a street
a horse.
he’s good
in his mid-forties he’s
good.
he’s found a
toy.
he’s happy
now.
then I think, I wonder if he will get
very good?
and I wonder if I will have to watch
the rest?
the glory and the women and the women and
the women and the women and
the decay.
I can almost smell the bloodsuckers forming
to the left.
you see,
I have fastened to him already.
my comrades
this one teaches
that one lives with his mother.
and that one is supported by a red-faced alcoholic father
with the brain of a gnat.
this one takes speed and has been supported by
the same woman for 14 years.
that one writes a novel every ten days
but at least pays his own rent.
this one goes from place to place
sleeping on couches, drinking and making his
spiel.
this one prints his own books on a duplicating
machine.
that one lives in an abandoned shower room
in a Hollywood hotel.
this one seems to know how to get grant after grant,
his life is a filling-out of forms.
this one is simply rich and lives in the best
places while knocking on the best doors.
that one had breakfast with William Carlos
Williams.
and this one teaches.
and that one teaches.
and this one puts out textbooks on how to do it
and speaks in a cruel and dominating voice.
they are everywhere.
everybody is a writer.
and almost every writer is a poet.
poets poets poets poets poets poets
poets poets poets poets poets poets
the next time the phone rings
it will be a poet.
the next person at the door
will be a poet.
this one teaches
and that one lives with his mother
and that one is writing the story of
Ezra Pound.
oh, brothers, we are the sickest and the
lowest of the breed.
soul
oh, how worried they are about my
soul!
I get letters
the phone rings…
“are you going to be all right?”
they ask.
“I’ll be all right,” I tell them.
“I’ve seen so many go down the drain,”
they tell me.
“don’t worry about me,” I say.
yet, they make me nervous.
I go in and take a shower
come out and squeeze a pimple on my
nose.
then I go into the kitchen and make
a salami and ham sandwich.
I used to live on candy bars.
now I have imported German mustard
for my sandwich. I might be in danger
at that.
the phone keeps ringing and the letters keep
arriving.
if you live in a closet with rats and
eat dry bread
they like you.
you’re a genius
then.
or if you’re in the madhouse or
the drunktank
they call you a genius.
or if you’re drunk and shouting
obscenities and
vomiting your life-guts on
the floor
you’re a genius.
but get the rent paid up a month in r />
advance
put on a new pair of stockings
go to the dentist
make love to a healthy clean girl
instead of a whore
and you’ve lost your
soul.
I’m not interested enough to ask about
their souls.
I suppose I
should.
a change of habit
Shirley came to town with a broken leg
and met the Chicano who smoked
long slim cigars
and they got a place together
on Beacon street
5th floor;
the leg didn’t get in the way
too much and
they watched television together
and Shirley cooked, on her
crutches and all;
there was a cat, Bogey,
and they had some friends
and talked about sports and Richard Nixon
and how the hell to
make it.
it worked for some months,
Shirley even got the cast off,
and the Chicano, Manuel,
got a job at the Biltmore,
Shirley sewed all the buttons back on
Manuel’s shirts, mended and matched his
socks, then
one day Manuel returned to the place, and
she was gone—
no argument, no note, just
gone, all her clothes
all her stuff, and