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    The People Look Like Flowers at Last: New Poems

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    talked some more and smoked and she

      got out of bed and said

      she had to go—

      her boyfriend lived downstairs with her,

      and I said goodbye

      and she left and

      then I looked over at the chair

      and I saw the clean white sheets.

      she had forgotten to change the sheets

      so I got up and

      changed the sheets for her.

      an agreement on Tchaikovsky

      both my legs are broken at the knees

      and I can’t move my right arm:

      it’s Spring and the birds are popping

      in and out of the brush

      driving the cats crazy.

      my good friend, Randy, frequents the

      men’s crappers at the racetrack

      looking for wallets: smart boy:

      if his folks had been rich

      he tells me he would have gone

      on to Harvard.

      she keeps playing Tchaikovsky’s 4th,

      the one that goes

      ka plunk plunk plunk plunk plunk;

      I don’t like it

      but old lady Rose

      my neighbor

      at the Sunset Park Rest Home

      thinks it’s

      beautiful.

      everybody’s too old here to use

      the tennis court

      there’s a layer of dust over the whole thing

      and the net’s a bunch of busted string.

      old lady Rose went to visit her kids today—

      that is, they came and got her, the old bag;

      she can’t walk at all

      and her legs aren’t even busted—

      she’s just a tiresome old

      fart!

      I wheeled myself into her room a while back

      and found a 10-dollar bill folded real neat

      and tight;

      she thought nobody’d find it

      in one of her old slippers

      but I’ve been around

      and she’ll come knocking on my door tonight

      asking for a “little touch of scotch”;

      man, all that crap about the land she USED

      to own in Arizona and how her husband USED

      to wear spats and carry a cane!

      he don’t need to wear anything where he’s at now;

      and while I was in there

      I cracked old Tchaikovsky #4 across the arm of a chair

      broke it good.

      and old lady Rose was right:

      it sounded damned beautiful to me:

      something like

      the cracking of walnuts.

      love song to the woman I saw Wednesday at the racetrack

      remembering Savannah 20 years ago

      a four poster bed

      and streets full of helmets and hunters

      things I did then

      left welts;

      ha ha, you say,

      but they come alive as I buy bread

      or lace a shoe

      and it doesn’t matter

      except that it works for me

      like the legs of that woman worked for me

      as the sun works for me as it works for the cactus

      and as you work for me

      reading this poem.

      and the legs of that woman walk

      as I watch them

      and the horses in the next race

      and the mountains stand there

      watching

      welts and a woman’s legs

      10-win on number six

      and out in the ocean

      or standing in the park

      like a statue

      I watch her

      walking.

      horses standing everywhere:

      Savannah-like seashells in my pocket:

      I have loved you woman

      as surely as I have named you

      rust and sand and nylon.

      you have worked for me

      wild thing.

      possession

      an old woman talks to a girl who is

      drying her long black hair while sitting on a back step,

      she points her finger and speaks in a foreign tongue

      and the sun is very beautiful

      as the old woman talks and combs the tangled strands

      (so many moons have gone down before and since).

      suddenly the young girl cries out and shakes her head

      and together they go back into the house

      where together they will die,

      but don’t they understand

      it was mine, not theirs:

      the hair, the long black sun-dried hair,

      and maybe the girl too?

      six

      10:30 a.m.

      5 coffee drinkers at the Pickwick Café

      the boys who work the horse stables

      at Hollywood Park

      turn in their swivel seats

      together,

      one, two, three, four, five,

      they turn

      leaving their cooling coffees and their

      small talk

      to stare at a girl walking by

      who comes in and sits in a booth.

      it is hardly an unusual girl,

      just a girl,

      and one, two, three, four,

      four of them turn back to their coffees;

      the 5th, a young healthy blond boy

      continues to look

      with his nice vacant blue eyes.

      then, at last, he turns back to his coffee.

      it has to be more than it appears, I think,

      ah yes, let me see,

      they are thinking, that’s the one who fucked Mick

      out behind the stables last night.

      yes, yes, of course, they are punishing her

      for not fucking them.

      nasty boys; little horse turd egos.

      they all believe they have cocks like stallions.

      “another coffee?” the waitress asks me.

      “yes, thanks,” I say, thinking, I should get a

      better look at that girl

      myself

      man mowing the lawn across the way from me

      I watch you walking with your machine.

      ah, you’re too stupid to be cut like grass,

      you’re too stupid to let anything violate you—

      the girls won’t use their knives on you

      they don’t want to

      their sharp edge is wasted on you,

      you are interested only in baseball games and

      western movies and grass blades.

      can’t you take just one of my knives?

      here’s an old one—stuck into me in 1955,

      she’s dead now, it wouldn’t hurt much.

      I can’t give you this last one—

      I can’t pull it out yet,

      but here’s one from 1964, how about taking

      this 1964 one from me?

      man mowing the lawn across the way from me

      don’t you have a knife somewhere in your gut

      where love left?

      man mowing the lawn across the way from me

      don’t you have a knife somewhere deep in your heart

      where love left?

      man mowing the lawn across the way from me

      don’t you see the young girls walking down the sidewalks now

      with knives in their purses?

      don’t you see their beautiful eyes and dresses and

      hair?

      don’t you see their beautiful asses and knees and

      ankles?

      man mowin
    g the lawn across the way from me

      is that all you see—those grass blades?

      is that all you hear—the drone of the mower?

      I can see all the way to Italy

      to Japan

      to Honduras

      I can see the young girls sharpening their knives

      in the morning and at noon and at night, and

      especially at night, o,

      especially at night.

      the girl outside

      it is 1:30 p.m.

      Monday

      65 degrees in November

      on Western Avenue.

      a girl walks out of a doorway

      and stands in front.

      an older woman comes out and leans

      against the doorway.

      the girl is in her early twenties

      dressed in a short buttoned-up

      red dress. she has on panty hose and

      orange slippers

      and gives the appearance of one

      who has just awakened.

      she grins in the afternoon.

      she does a short sexy dance and grins.

      she is pale. she is blonde.

      suddenly she waves at somebody passing

      in a car.

      life is interesting.

      she is young.

      she is a girl.

      she dances again. she waves. she

      grins.

      that’s all very nice for 1:30 in the

      afternoon at 65 degrees.

      she wants money.

      she waves. she dances.

      she grins.

      the older woman is bored and walks back

      inside.

      I start my car in the parking lot across the

      street.

      I drive west down Oakwood and no longer see

      the girl.

      it’s so strange. I think,

      we all need money.

      then I turn on the radio and try to

      forget about

      that.

      the chicken

      I came by, she said,

      and I hung this roasted chicken on your doorknob

      and two days later it was still hanging there

      swinging in the wind.

      you should have seen that thing!

      and your car was outside

      and the chicken kept swinging

      and I said to my husband,

      what’s that stink?

      he must be dead.

      the wind was really blowing that

      chicken around, you should have seen that

      chicken swing, and I told my husband,

      that crazy son-of-a-bitch must be dead

      in there.

      so he got the key and we went in.

      yeah, I said, what did you find?

      just empty bottles and garbage. you

      were gone. you weren’t in

      there.

      did you look in all the closets?

      we looked everywhere, under the bed,

      everywhere.

      I wonder where I was?

      I dunno. where did you get that big scab on your head?

      I was toasting a marshmallow on a coat hanger and

      burned my fore-

      head.

      oh, I thought maybe somebody hit you.

      uh-uh, I said, uh-uh.

      an ancient love

      I don’t remember our ages:

      we must have been between 5 and 7,

      there was this girl next door about my age.

      I do remember her name: Lila Jane.

      and one thing she would do every day,

      once a day, was to ask me:

      “are you ready?”

      and I would indicate that I was

      and she would lift her dress and

      show me her panties and they were

      a different color each day.

      several decades later she somehow found me

      and came by with her boyfriend

      some fellow who smoked a pipe

      and who read my books

      and she crossed her long beautiful legs

      high

      but not high enough for me to see the panties.

      and when they were ready to leave

      I gave her a hug and

      I shook hands with her boyfriend

      and I never saw him or her

      or her panties

      ever again.

      match point

      read in the paper where a 72-year-old wife strangled her

      91-year-old husband with his

      necktie.

      she said the age difference was

      unbearable and added that

      when they had met on a tennis court 30 years

      earlier

      the age gap had not seemed

      important.

      it looks like I’ve been in serious danger

      at least a half dozen times

      in the last 25 years or so and still

      am.

      there’s just one necktie in my

      closet, purchased it to go to a funeral

      not long ago,

      but I’ve never played

      tennis and don’t intend to

      try.

      I also like to look at ceilings

      there are policemen in the street

      and angels in the clouds

      and jockeys riding in their silks.

      down through the mornings

      up through the nights

      parallel to the afternoons

      there are crippled dogs in

      East Kansas City

      vampires in Eugene, Oregon

      and a long walk for a glass of water in the

      Twin Cities.

      I meant to write Angela

      I really did

      and thank her for everything

      because I sincerely

      liked the way she draped shawls on her

      staircase

      and her herb tea

      and the green vines in her

      bathroom

      the view from her bedroom

      and her collection of

      Vivaldi.

      but I didn’t.

      I guess I’m crueler than

      I think I am.

      no Cagney, me

      I had a borrowed tv set for a month

      and saw some old Cagney movies.

      much of Cagney’s interaction with women

      takes place in the kitchen.

      they say something he doesn’t

      like. he slaps them with a dish towel

      or pushes a grapefruit into their

      face. they weep and fall

      into his arms.

      me, I am always being attacked by

      women

      especially when I am discouraged or

      tired. they push me out of doorways

      into the rain, into mud puddles on my

      back. they pour beer over my head

      come at me with knives and bookends

      they attack

      snarling like the leopard

      they rip my coats and shirts

      apart.

      they attack me at the moment

      I am casually talking to a

      friend or while I am

      asleep. sometimes they also beat their heads

      against the wall.

      I’m leaving, I say.

      oh, you always want to end it,

    />   don’t you?

      well, Christ, you act like you don’t

      like it.

      well, go then, go!

      I go. no Cagney, me. I drive away

      thinking, oh shit, God, it’s so nice to

      be alone again.

      you had it, Jimmy.

      what a woman wants is a

      reaction.

      what a man wants is a

      woman.

      you’re best.

      soup, cosmos and tears

      I’ve known some crazy women

      but the craziest was

      Annette

      and it seems the crazier they are

      the better the lay,

      and what bodies they

      have. Annette always lived with

      Chinese men

      but you never saw them

      that’s what scared you,

      even the Mafia is scared of the Chinese—

      “where’s the dragon, kid?”

      “that’s all right. he knows you’re all right.”

      “you sure? when they put the X on you,

      you might as well

      forget it.”

      “I told them you were all right. that’s all

      they need.”

      Annette had incense burning,

      all sorts of charts and weirdo books,

      she always talked about the gods

      she had a direct line to the gods.

      “you have been selected by the gods,” she told

      me.

      “o.k., babe, let’s make it

      then.”

      “not right now. I want you to try this special soup

      I’ve made.”

      “special soup?”

      “yes, eat it and you will inherit the forces of

      earth and sun, the entire

      cosmos.”

      I went and ate the soup. frankly, it tasted all right,

      though a bit rusty. no telling what the hell she had

      put in there. I finished

      it.

      “I feel like a man of steel

      now.”

      “you have inherited the force,” she said, “the gods are

     
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