The People Look Like Flowers at Last: New Poems
proud of you.”
on the couch I finally got hold of
her. under that loose orange gown
was enough woman to kill an
ox.
“I lived in that hotel in Paris,” she said. “I slept with all of
them. Burroughs, the whole
gang. I knew Pound at St. Liz.”
“you slept with Ezra?”
“more than any!”
“oh fuck!”
“go,” she laughed, “ahead.”
it had been good
soup. those Paris boys and
Ezra had known a good
mare.
I rolled
off.
when she came out of the bathroom she
had a bottle in her hand and began sprinkling me
with the
contents.
“hey, what’s this shit?”
“the tears of the
gods.”
“the tears of the gods?”
“yes, the tears of the
gods.”
I laid there until she was
finished.
then I got up and
dressed.
“when can I see you
again?”
“in 2 hours or
tomorrow.”
I walked to the door.
“you walk like a
poem,” she said.
“see you in 2
hours,” I told
her.
the door closed. what a man had to go through for a
piece of ass
in this modern age was
highly
suspect.
peacock or bell
I am laughing mouth closed;
as I turn the pages of my newspaper
it’s like a symphony gone wrong;
seeing much to make me doubt
flashing there across the page
it’s like a cheap movie gone haywire;
my clothing sits in chairs
like the dead emptied out,
husks of things wrinkling the vision;
it’s colder than hell (yes) but
the blankets are thin,
and the pulled-down shades
are as full of holes as love is.
I think you’ve got to be a sportsman;
yes, for the sportsman it’s all right:
you just crack out the gun
and blow the head off something
perhaps off the maiden sitting in
the chair that grandma sat in,
but not having a gun,
I go to the phone
and phone a woman as old as the chair and grandma,
and she promises to come and charm me;
she has a toothbrush but no teeth
and I will probably dance naked for her
my blob of belly a white sack.
each man has his own way out: mine is doubtful
but has been working well of late
and the music of it sometimes frightens me,
but then
I wake up, buy a paper,
kick a can,
pull up the shade,
start again.
purple and black
a girl in purple pants and black sweater
crossing the street
with a camper and high-rise background,
a Saturday afternoon graveyard Hollywood
background,
is quite interesting:
something moving,
something moving in purple and black as
her hair waves in the wind as she turns,
the sun like the eye of a frog,
winter is where it’s at
here, and the street is insipid, vapid,
I could pound myself against that asphalt until
I bled mad
and it wouldn’t care;
the girl in purple and black
gives the street destination and direction
until she is out of range of my window,
and now it is again
what it was, and a small spider
almost like something made out of a lost hair,
an eyelid hair,
crawls along the wall to my left
and I don’t have even the desire to
kill it. outside my window
it is ghost-shivered and
stinks of the malice of men.
I wait for new arrangements
but meanwhile endure
as the phone rings
as I leap from my chair
like a man shot in the
back.
fulfillment
she disciplined herself in
anger
hatred and cunning
strategy.
I always thought that it would
finally pass
that she was giddy with
misconception and bad
advice.
I always felt it would
pass.
I listened to the charges against me
knowing some of them to be true
but certainly not
important enough
to become the target of
violence, envy,
vengeance.
I thought it would surely
pass.
I commandeered no
defense
thinking that easy
reason
would save us
both
but her determination
strengthened—
even then
I summed it up as headstrong, overzealous
energy
but the moment I gave ground
more ground was
taken.
lord, I thought, it’s just simple
violence
and so I trotted my horse
out of the stable
sharpened my knives and
began a
counterattack.
she’d finally found
as good an opponent as could be
found.
her determination demanded her own
destruction.
she’d found her
match
I mounted my steed
sword ready
ready even for the sun.
she’d always wanted war
I’d grant her wish
love be damned now
as love was damned when it
first arrived.
my reluctance would
now be gone
forever
and the blood
would flow
hers and mine
just as she desired.
yours
my women of the past keep trying to locate me.
I duck into dark closets and pull the overcoats
over my head.
at the racetrack I sit in the clubhouse
smoking cigarette after cigarette
watching the horses come out for the post parade
and looking over my shoulder.
I go to bet and this one’s ass looks like that one’s
ass used to.
I duck away from her.
then that one’s hair might have her under it.
I get the h
ell out of the clubhouse and go
to the grandstand.
I don’t want a return of the past.
I don’t want a return of those
ladies of my past,
I don’t want to try again, I don’t want to see
them again even in silhouette;
I give them all, all of them to all the other eager
men, they can have those darlings,
those tits those asses those thighs those minds
and their mothers and fathers and sisters and
brothers and children and dogs and x-boyfriends
and current boyfriends, they can have them all and
fuck them all
if they want to.
I was a terrible and jealous lover who mistreated
and failed to understand
them and it’s best that they are with others now
for that will be better for them and that will be
better for me
so when they phone or write or leave
messages
I will forward them all to their new
fine fellows.
I don’t deserve what they have and I want to
keep it that way.
kissing me away
she was always thinking about it
and she was young and beautiful and
all my friends were jealous:
what was an old fuck like me
doing with a young girl like
her?
she was always thinking about
it.
we’d be driving along and
she’d say, “see that little
place? park over there.”
I’d hardly get parked and
she’d be down on me.
once I drove her to Arizona
and halfway there
late at night
after coffee and doughnuts
at an all-night joint
she bent over
and started in
while I was navigating the
dark curves through the
low hills
and as I kept driving
it inspired her to
new heights.
another time
in L.A.
we’d purchased hot dogs and cokes
and fries and we were eating in
Griffith Park
families there
children playing
and she unzipped me
and started in.
“what the hell are you doing?”
I asked her.
later
when I asked her
why
in front of everybody
she told me it was
dangerous and thrilling
that way.
she asked me one
time, “why am I staying with an
old guy like you
anyhow?”
“so you can give me blow
jobs?” I replied.
“I hate that term!” she
said.
“sucking me off,” I
suggested.
“I hate that term
too!” she said.
“what would you prefer?”
I asked.
“I like to think that
I’m ‘kissing you away,’”
she said.
“all right,” I said.
it was like any other
relationship, there was
jealousy on both sides,
there were split-ups and
reconciliations.
there were also fragmented moments of
great peace and beauty.
I often tried to get away from her and
she tried to get away from me
but it was difficult:
Cupid, in his strange way, was really
there.
whenever I had to leave town
she kissed me away
good
a couple of nights in a
row
ensuring my
fidelity.
then all I had to
do was
worry about
her.
when she wasn’t
kissing me away
we also found time
to do it
in several other strange
ways.
but all that time with
her it
was mostly just
being
kissed away or
waiting to be.
we never thought about
much else.
we never went to
movies (which I hated
anyhow).
we never ate
out.
we were not curious
about
world affairs.
we just spent our time
parked in
secluded places or picnic
grounds or
driving dark
roads to New Mexico,
Nevada and Utah.
or
we were in her big oak
bed
facing south
so much of the rest of the
time
that I memorized
each wrinkle in the
drapes
and especially
all the cracks in the
ceiling.
I used to play games with
her with that ceiling.
“see those cracks up
there?”
“where?”
“look where I’m pointing…”
“o.k.”
“now, see those cracks, see the
pattern? it forms an image. do you see
what it is?”
“umm, umm…”
“go on, what is it?”
“I know! it’s a man on top of a
woman!”
“wrong. it’s a flamingo standing
by a stream.”
we finally got free of
one another.
it’s sad but it’s
standard operating procedure
(I am constantly confused by
the lack of durability in human
affairs).
I suppose the parting was
unhappy
maybe even ugly.
it’s been 3 or 4
years now
and I wonder if she
ever thinks of
me, of what I am
doing?
of course, I know what she’s
doing.
and she did it better
than anybody
I ever knew.
and I guess that’s worth this
poem, maybe.
if not, then at least a
footnote: that such affairs are
not without joy and humor for both
parties
and as Saigon and the enemy tanks get
scrambled in old dreams
as old and infirm dogs get
killed crossing roads
as the drawbridge rises to let
the drunken fishermen out to
sea
it wasn’t for nothing
that
s
he was thinking
about it
all the
time.
goodbye, my love
deadly ash of everything
we’ve mauled it to pieces
ripped the head off
the arms
the legs
cut away the sexual organs
pissed on the heart
deadly ash of everything
everywhere
the sidewalks are now harder
the eyes of the populace crueler
the music more tasteless
ash
I’m left with pure
ash
first we pissed on the heart
now we piss on the ash.
heat
if you have ever drawn up your last plan on
an old shirt cardboard in an Eastside hotel room of winter
with last week’s rent due and a dead radiator
you’ll know how large small things are
like yourself coming up the stairway
maybe for the final time
with your bottle of wine
thinking of the lady in #9
putting on her garters
and on her dresser there is a
dark red drinking glass
which catches the overhead light like a
soft dream of Jerusalem
and she dusts herself
slips into silk and sheath and
spiked feet
and unemployed and looking for work
and maybe looking for you
she passes you on the
stairway;
such disturbing grace
transforms one.
like a blue-winged fly exploding into
the summer sky
you decide to hang around and
die later; you enter your room and pour wine like
blood, inward, and decide in the morning you’ll
get up early and
read the want
ads.
the police helicopter