The Pleasures of the Damned
we are rusty with sadness and
feverish
with climbing broken ladders.
Take us:
we were never children
like your children.
We do not understand love songs
like your inamorata.
Our faces are cracked linoleum,
cracked through with the heavy, sure
feet of our masters.
We are shot through with carrot tops
and poppyseed and tilted grammar;
we waste days like mad blackbirds
and pray for alcoholic nights.
Our silk-sick human smiles wrap around
us like somebody else’s confetti:
we do not even belong to the Party.
We are a scene chalked-out with the
sick white brush of Age.
We smoke, asleep as a dish of figs.
We smoke, dead as a fog.
Take us.
A bathtub murder
or something quick and bright; our names
in the papers.
Known, at last, for a moment
to millions of careless and grape-dull eyes
that hold themselves private
to only flicker and flame
at the poor cracker-barrel jibes
of their conceited, pampered correct comedians.
Known, at last, for a moment,
as they will be known
and as you will be known
by an all-gray man on an all-gray horse
who sits and fondles a sword
longer than the night
longer than the mountain’s aching backbone
longer than all the cries
that have a-bombed up out of throats
and exploded in a newer, less-planned
land.
We smoke and the clouds do not notice us.
A cat walks by and shakes Shakespeare off of his back.
Tallow, tallow, candle like wax: our spines
are limp and our consciousness burns
guilelessly away
the remaining wick life has
doled out to us.
An old man asked me for a cigarette
and told me his troubles
and this
is what he said:
that Age was a crime
and that Pity picked up the marbles
and that Hatred picked up the
cash.
He might have been your father
or mine.
He might have been a sex-fiend
or a saint.
But what ever he was,
he was condemned
and we stood in the sun and
smoked
and looked around
in our leisure
to see who was next in
line.
my fate
like the fox
I run with the hunted
and if I’m not
the happiest man
on earth
I’m surely the
luckiest man
alive.
(uncollected)
my atomic stockpile
I cleaned my place the other day
first time in ten years
and found 100 rejected poems:
I fastened them all to a clipboard
(much bad reading).
now I will clean their teeth
fill their cavities
give them eye and ear examinations
weigh them
offer blood transfusions
then send them out again into the
sick world of posey.
either that
or I must burn down your cities,
rape your women,
murder your men,
enslave your children.
every time I clean my room
the world trembles in the balance.
that’s why I only do it once every
ten years.
(uncollected)
Bruckner (2)
Bruckner wasn’t bad
even though he got down
on his knees
and proclaimed Wagner
the master.
it saddens me, I guess,
in a small way
because while Wagner was
hitting all those homers
Bruckner was sacrificing
the runners to second
and he knew it.
and I know that
mixing baseball metaphors with classical
music
will not please the purists
either.
I prefer Ruth to most of his teammates
but I appreciate those others who did
the best they could
and kept on doing it
even when they knew they
were second best.
this is your club fighter
your back-up quarterback
the unknown jock who sometimes
brings one in
at 40-to-one.
this was Bruckner.
there are times when we should
remember
the strange courage
of the second-rate
who refuse to quit
when the nights
are black and long and sleepless
and the days are without
end.
hello, how are you?
this fear of being what they are:
dead.
at least they are not out on the street, they
are careful to stay indoors, those
pasty mad who sit alone before their TV sets,
their lives full of canned, mutilated laughter.
their ideal neighborhood
of parked cars
of little green lawns
of little homes
the little doors that open and close
as their relatives visit
throughout the holidays
the doors closing
behind the dying who die so slowly
behind the dead who are still alive
in your quiet average neighborhood
of winding streets
of agony
of confusion
of horror
of fear
of ignorance.
a dog standing behind a fence.
a man silent at the window.
vacancy
sun-stroked women
without men
on a Santa Monica Monday;
the men are working or in jail
or insane;
one girl floats in a rubber suit,
waiting…
houses slide off the edges of cliffs
and down into the sea.
the bars are empty
the lobster eating houses are empty;
it’s a recession, they say,
the good days are
over.
you can’t tell an unemployed man
from an artist any more,
they all look alike
and the women look the same,
only a little more desperate.
we stop at a hippie hole
in Topanga Canyon…
and wait, wait, wait;
the whole area of the canyon and the beach
is listless
useless
VACANCY, it says, PEOPLE WANTED.
the wood has no fire
the sea is dirty
the hills are dry
the temples have no bells
love has no bed
sun-stroked women without men
one sailboat
life drowned.
batting slump
the sun slides down through the shades.
I have a pair of black shoes and a pair of
brown shoes.
I can hardly remember the girls of my youth.
there is numb blood pulsing thro
ugh the
falcon and the hyena and the pimp
and there’s no escaping this unreasonable
sorrow.
there’s crabgrass and razor wire and the snoring
of my cat.
there are lifeguards sitting in canvas-back chairs
with salt rotting under their toenails.
there’s the hunter with eyes like rose
petals.
sorrow, yes, it pulls at me
I don’t know why.
avenues of despair slide into my ears.
the worms won’t sing.
the Babe swings again
missing a 3-and-2 pitch
twisting around himself
leaning over his
whiskey gut.
cows give milk
dentists pull teeth
thermometers work.
I can sing the blues
it doesn’t cost a dime and
when I lay down to night
pull up the covers
there’s the dark factor
there’s the unknown factor
there’s this manufactured
staggering
black
empty
space.
I got to hit one out of here
pretty soon.
bang bang
absolutely sesamoid
said the skeleton
shoving his chalky foot
upon my desk,
and that was it,
bang bang,
he looked at me,
and it was my bone body
and I was what remained,
and there was a newspaper
on my desk
and somebody folded the newspaper
and I folded,
I was the newspaper
under somebody’s arm
and the sheet of me
had eyes
and I saw the skeleton
watching
and just before the door closed
I saw a man who looked
partly like Napoleon,
partly like Hitler,
fighting with my skeleton,
then the door closed
and we went down the steps
and outside
and I was under
the arm
of a fat little man
who knew nothing
and I hated him
for his indifference
to fact, how I hated him
as he unfolded me
in the subway
and I fell against the back
of an old woman.
the pleasures of the damned
the pleasures of the damned
are limited to brief moments
of happiness:
like the eyes in the look of a dog,
like a square of wax,
like a fire taking the city hall,
the county,
the continent,
like fire taking the hair
of maidens and monsters;
and hawks buzzing in peach trees,
the sea running between their claws,
Time
drunk and damp,
everything burning,
everything wet,
everything fine.
one more good one
to be writing poetry at the age of 50
like a schoolboy,
surely, I must be crazy;
racetracks and booze and arguments
with the landlord;
watercolor paintings under the bed
with dirty socks;
a bathtub full of trash
and a garbage can lined with
underground newspapers;
a record player that doesn’t work,
a radio that doesn’t work,
and I don’t work—
I sit between 2 lamps,
bottle on the floor
begging a 20-year-old typewriter
to say something, in a way and
well enough
so they won’t confuse me
with the more comfortable
practitioners;
this is certainly not a game for
flyweights or Ping-Pong players—
all arguments to the contrary.
—but once you get the taste, it’s good to get your
teeth into
words. I forgive those who
can’t quit.
I forgive myself.
this is where the action is,
this is the hot horse that
comes in.
there’s no grander fort
no better flag
no better woman
no better way; yet there’s much else to say—
there seems as much hell in it as
magic; death gets as close as any lover has,
closer,
you know it like your right hand
like a mark on the wall
like your daughter’s name,
you know it like the face on the corner
newsboy,
and you sit there with flowers and houses
with dogs and death and a boil on the neck,
you sit down and do it again and again
the machinegun chattering by the window
as the people walk by
as you sit in your undershirt,
50, on an indelicate March evening,
as their faces look in and help you write the next 5
lines,
as they walk by and say,
“the old man in the window, what’s the deal with
him?”
—fucked by the muse, friends,
thank you—
and I roll a cigarette with one hand
like the old bum
I am, and then thank and curse the gods
alike,
lean forward
drag on the cigarette
think of the good fighters
like poor Hem, poor Beau Jack, poor Sugar Ray,
poor Kid Gavilan, poor Villon, poor Babe, poor
Hart Crane, poor
me, hahaha.
I lean forward,
redhot ash
falling on my wrists,
teeth into the word.
crazy at the age of 50,
I send it
home.
the little girls hissed
since my last name was Fuch, he said to Raymond, you can
believe the school yard was tough: they put itching
powder down my neck, threw gravel at me, stung me
with rubber bands in class, and outside they called
me names, well, one name mainly, over and over,
and on top of all that my parents were poor, I wore
cardboard in my shoes to fill in the holes in the
soles, my pants were patched, my shirts threadbare;
and even my teachers ganged up
on me, they slammed my
palm with rulers and sent me to the principal’s office as
if I was really guilty of something;
and, of course, the abuse kept coming from my classmates;
I was stoned, beaten, pissed on;
the little girls hissed and stuck their tongues out
at me…
Fuch’s wife smiled sadly at Raymond: my poor darling husband had
such a terrible childhood!
(she was so beautiful it almost stunned one to look at
her.)
Fuch looked at Raymond: hey, your glass is empty.
yeah, said Raymond.
Fuch touched a button and the English butler silently
glided in. he nodded respectfully to Raymond and in his
beautiful accent asked, another drink, sir?
yes, please, Raymond answered.
the butler went off to prepare the drink.
what hurt most, of course, continued Fuch, was the name
&nb
sp; calling.
Raymond asked, have you never forgotten it?
I did for a while, but then strangely I began to
miss the abuse…
the butler returned carrying Raymond’s
drink on a silver tray.
here is your drink, sir, said the butler.
thank you, said Raymond, taking it off the tray.
o.k., Paul, Fuch said to the butler, you can
start now.
now? asked the butler.
now, came the answer.
the butler stood in front of Fuch and screamed:
fucky-boy! fucky-baby! fuck-face! fuck-brain!
where did your name come from, fuck-head?
how come you’re such a fuck-up?
etc….
they all started laughing uncontrollably
as the butler delivered his tirade in that
beautiful British accent.
they couldn’t stop laughing, they fell out of their
chairs and got down on the rug, pounding it and