Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame

  when you can laugh at the breadman

  because his legs are too long, days

  of looking at hedges…

  and nothing, and nothing. the days of

  the bosses, yellow men

  with bad breath and big feet, men

  who look like frogs, hyenas, men who walk

  as if melody had never been invented, men

  who think it is intelligent to hire and fire and

  profit, men with expensive wives they possess

  like 60 acres of ground to be drilled

  or shown-off or to be walled away from

  the incompetent, men who’d kill you

  because they’re crazy and justify it because

  it’s the law, men who stand in front of

  windows 30 feet wide and see nothing,

  men with luxury yachts who can sail around

  the world and yet never get out of their vest

  pockets, men like snails, men like eels, men

  like slugs, and not as good…

  and nothing. getting your last paycheck

  at a harbor, at a factory, at a hospital, at an

  aircraft plant, at a penny arcade, at a

  barbershop, at a job you didn’t want

  anyway.

  income tax, sickness, servility, broken

  arms, broken heads—all the stuffing

  come out like an old pillow.

  we have everything and we have nothing.

  some do it well enough for a while and

  then give way. fame gets them or disgust

  or age or lack of proper diet or ink

  across the eyes or children in college

  or new cars or broken backs while skiing

  in Switzerland or new politics or new wives

  or just natural change and decay—

  the man you knew yesterday hooking

  for ten rounds or drinking for three days and

  three nights by the Sawtooth mountains now

  just something under a sheet or a cross

  or a stone or under an easy delusion,

  or packing a bible or a golf bag or a

  briefcase: how they go, how they go!—all

  the ones you thought would never go.

  days like this. like your day today.

  maybe the rain on the window trying to

  get through to you. what do you see today?

  what is it? where are you? the best

  days are sometimes the first, sometimes

  the middle and even sometimes the last.

  the vacant lots are not bad, churches in

  Europe on postcards are not bad. people in

  wax museums frozen into their best sterility

  are not bad, horrible but not bad. the

  cannon, think of the cannon. and toast for

  breakfast the coffee hot enough you

  know your tongue is still there. three

  geraniums outside a window, trying to be

  red and trying to be pink and trying to be

  geraniums. no wonder sometimes the women

  cry, no wonder the mules don’t want

  to go up the hill. are you in a hotel room

  in Detroit looking for a cigarette? one more

  good day. a little bit of it. and as

  the nurses come out of the building after

  their shift, having had enough, eight nurses

  with different names and different places

  to go—walking across the lawn, some of them

  want cocoa and a paper, some of them want a

  hot bath, some of them want a man, some

  of them are hardly thinking at all. enough

  and not enough. arcs and pilgrims, oranges

  gutters, ferns, antibodies, boxes of

  tissue paper.

  in the most decent sometimes sun

  there is the softsmoke feeling from urns

  and the canned sound of old battleplanes

  and if you go inside and run your finger

  along the window ledge you’ll find

  dirt, maybe even earth.

  and if you look out the window

  there will be the day, and as you

  get older you’ll keep looking

  keep looking

  sucking your tongue in a little

  ah ah no no maybe

  some do it naturally

  some obscenely

  everywhere.

  sway with me

  sway with me, everything sad—

  madmen in stone houses

  without doors,

  lepers streaming love and song

  frogs trying to figure

  the sky;

  sway with me, sad things—

  fingers split on a forge

  old age like breakfast shells

  used books, used people

  used flowers, used love

  I need you

  I need you

  I need you:

  it has run away

  like a horse or a dog,

  dead or lost

  or unforgiving.

  lack of almost everything

  the essence of the belly

  like a white balloon sacked

  is disturbing

  like the running of feet

  on the stairs

  when you don’t know

  who is there.

  of course, if you turn on the radio

  you might forget

  the fat under your shirt

  or the rats lined up in order

  like old women on Hollywood Blvd

  waiting on a comedy

  show.

  I think of old men

  in four dollar rooms

  looking for socks in dresser drawers

  while standing in brown underwear

  all the time the clock ticking on

  warm as a

  cobra.

  ah, there are some decent things, maybe:

  the sky, the circus

  the legs of ladies getting out of cars,

  the peach coming through the door

  like a Mozart symphony.

  the scale says 198. that’s what

  I weigh. it is 2:10 a.m.

  dedication is for chess players.

  the glorious single cause is

  waiting on the anvil

  while

  smoking, pissing, reading Genet

  or the funny papers;

  but maybe it’s early enough yet

  to write your aunt in

  Palm Springs and tell her

  what’s wrong.

  no. 6

  I’ll settle for the 6 horse

  on a rainy afternoon

  a paper cup of coffee

  in my hand

  a little way to go,

  the wind twirling out

  small wrens from

  the upper grandstand roof,

  the jocks coming out

  for a middle race

  silent

  and the easy rain making

  everything

  at once

  almost alike,

  the horses at peace with

  each other

  before the drunken war

  and I am under the grandstand

  feeling for

  cigarettes

  settling for coffee,

  then the horses walk by

  taking their little men

  away—

  it is funereal and graceful

  and glad

  like the opening

  of flowers.

  don’t come round but if you do…

  yeah sure, I’ll be in unless I’m out

  don’t knock if the lights are out

  or you hear voices or then

  I might be reading Proust

  if someone slips Proust under my door

  or one of his bones for my stew,

  and I can’t loan money or

  the ph
one

  or what’s left of my car

  though you can have yesterday’s newspaper

  an old shirt or a bologna sandwich

  or sleep on the couch

  if you don’t scream at night

  and you can talk about yourself

  that’s only normal;

  hard times are upon us all

  only I am not trying to raise a family

  to send through Harvard

  or buy hunting land,

  I am not aiming high

  I am only trying to keep myself alive

  just a little longer,

  so if you sometimes knock

  and I don’t answer

  and there isn’t a woman in here

  maybe I have broken my jaw

  and am looking for wire

  or I am chasing the butterflies in

  my wallpaper,

  I mean if I don’t answer

  I don’t answer, and the reason is

  that I am not yet ready to kill you

  or love you, or even accept you,

  it means I don’t want to talk

  I am busy, I am mad, I am glad

  or maybe I’m stringing up a rope;

  so even if the lights are on

  and you hear sound

  like breathing or praying or singing

  a radio or the roll of dice

  or typing—

  go away, it is not the day

  the night, the hour;

  it is not the ignorance of impoliteness,

  I wish to hurt nothing, not even a bug

  but sometimes I gather evidence of a kind

  that takes some sorting,

  and your blue eyes, be they blue

  and your hair, if you have some

  or your mind—they cannot enter

  until the rope is cut or knotted

  or until I have shaven into

  new mirrors, until the world is

  stopped or opened

  forever.

  startled into life like fire

  in grievous deity my cat

  walks around

  he walks around and around

  with

  electric tail and

  push-button

  eyes

  he is

  alive and

  plush and

  final as a plum tree

  neither of us understands

  cathedrals or

  the man outside

  watering his

  lawn

  if I were all the man

  that he is

  cat—

  if there were men

  like this

  the world could

  begin

  he leaps up on the couch

  and walks through

  porticoes of my

  admiration.

  stew

  stew at noon, my dear; and look:

  the ants, the sawdust, the mica

  plants, the shadows of banks like

  bad jokes;

  do you think we’ll hear

  The Bartered Bride today?

  how’s your tooth?

  I should wash my feet and

  clean my nails

  not that I’d feel more like Christ

  but

  less like a leper—

  which is important when

  poverty is a small game you play

  with your time.

  let’s see: first the mailman

  then yesterday’s copy of the Times.

  we might

  this way

  get blown up a day too

  late.

  then there’s the library or

  a walk down the boulevards.

  many great men have

  walked down the boulevards

  but it’s terrible to be

  a great man

  like a monkey carrying a 5 pound

  sack of potatoes up a 40 foot hill.

  Paris can wait.

  more salt?

  after we eat

  let’s sleep, let’s sleep.

  we can’t make any money

  awake.

  lilies in my brain

  the lilies storm my brain

  by god by god

  like nazi storm troopers!

  do you think I’m going

  tizzy?

  your blue sweater

  with tits hanging

  loose, and

  I think vaguely of Christ

  on the cross, I don’t know

  why, and icecream

  cones. this July day

  lilies storm my brain,

  I’ll remember this

  but

  if only I had a

  camera

  or a big dog walking beside

  me. big dogs make things

  concrete

  don’t they?

  a big dog to wrinkle his

  snot-nose

  like this lake gypped of

  clear surface

  by a quick and clever

  wind.

  you’re here, yet I’m sad

  again. I feel my porkchop ribs

  over my lambchop heart ugh

  gullible hard-working

  intestines, dejected penis

  chewing-gum bladder

  liver turning to fat

  like a penny-arcade trout

  ashamed buttocks

  practical ears

  moth-like hands

  spearfish nose

  rock-slide mouth and

  the rest. the rest:

  lilies in my brain

  hoping good times

  thinking old times:

  Capone and the diamonds

  Charlie Chaplin

  Laurel and Hardy

  Clara Bow

  the rest.

  it never happened

  but it seemed like

  there were times when rot

  stopped

  waited like a streetcar

  at a signal.

  now I

  like a movie punk

  (lilies up there)

  take your hand

  and we walk forward

  to rent a boat

  to drown in. I breathe the wind, flex my muscles

  but only my belly

  wiggles.

  we get in

  the motor churns the

  slime.

  the city buildings

  come down like ostrich

  mouths

  and hollow out

  our brains

  yet the sun

  comes in

  zap! zap! zap!

  brilliant germs crawl our

  chapped flesh. my

  I feel as if I were in

  church: everything

  stinks. I hold the rubber sides

  of everywhere

  my balls are snowballs

  I see stricken bells of malaria

  old men getting into

  bed, into model-T Fords

  as the fish swim below us

  full of dirty words and macaroni

  and crossword puzzles

  and the death of me, you and

  the Katzenjammer

  kids.

  i am dead but i know the dead are not like this

  the dead can sleep

  they don’t get up and rage

  they don’t have a wife.

  her white face

  like a flower in a closed

  window lifts up and

  looks at me.

  the curtain smokes a cigarette

  and a moth dies in a

  freeway crash

  as I examine the shadows of my

  hands.

  an owl, the size of a baby clock

  rings for me, come on come on

  it says as Jerusalem is hustled

  down crotch-stained halls.

  the 5 a.m. grass is nasal now

  in hums of battleships
and valleys

  in the raped light that brings on

  the fascist birds.

  I put out the lamp and get in bed

  beside her, she thinks I’m there

  mumbles a rosy gratitude

  as I stretch my legs

  to coffin length

  get in and swim away

  from frogs and fortunes.

  like a violet in the snow

  in the earliest possible day

  in the blue-headed noon

  I will telegraph you

  a

  boney hand

  decorated with

  sharkskin

  a

  large boy with

  yellow teeth and an epileptic

  father

  will bring it

  to your

  door

  smile

  and

  accept

  it is better than

  the

  alternative

  letter from too far

  she wrote me a letter from a small

  room near the Seine.

  she said she was going to dancing

  class, she got up, she said

  at 5 o’clock in the morning

  and typed at poems

  or painted

  and when she felt like crying

  she had a special bench

  by the river.

  her book of Songs

  would be out

  in the Fall.

  I did not know what to tell her

  but

  I told her

  to get any bad teeth pulled

  and be careful of the French

  lover.

  I put her photo by the radio

  near the fan