and they look at his paintings
and love him
now.
for that kind of love
he did the right
thing
as for the other kind of love
it never arrived.
the railroad yard
the feelings I get
driving past the railroad yard
(never on purpose but on my way to somewhere)
are the feelings other men have for other things.
I see the tracks and all the boxcars
the tank cars the flat cars
all of them motionless and so many of them
perfectly lined up and not an engine anywhere
(where are all the engines?).
I drive past looking sideways at it all
a wide, still railroad yard
not a human in sight
then I am past the yard
and it wasn’t just the romance of it all
that gives me what I get
but something back there nameless
always making me feel better
as some men feel better looking at the open sea
or the mountains or at wild animals
or at a woman
I like those things too
especially the wild animals and the woman
but when I see those lovely old boxcars
with their faded painted lettering
and those flat cars and those fat round tankers
all lined up and waiting
I get quiet inside
I get what other men get from other things
I just feel better and it’s good to feel better
whenever you can
not needing a reason.
the girls at the green hotel
are more beautiful than
movie stars
and they lounge on the
lawn
sunbathing
and one sits in a short
dress and high
heels, legs crossed
exposing miraculous
thighs.
she has a bandanna
on her head
and smokes a
long cigarette.
traffic slows
almost stops.
the girls ignore
the traffic.
they are half
asleep in the afternoon
they are whores
they are whores without
souls
and they are magic
because they lie
about nothing.
I get in my car
wait for traffic to
clear,
drive across the street
to the green hotel
to my favorite:
she is
sunbathing on the
lawn nearest the
curb.
“hello,” I say.
she turns eyes like
imitation diamonds
up at me.
her face has no
expression.
I drop my latest
book of poems
out the car
window.
it falls
by her side.
I shift into
low,
drive off.
there’ll be some
laughs
to night.
in other words
the Egyptians loved the cat
were often entombed with it
instead of with the women
and never with the dog
but now
here
good people with
good eyes
are very few
yet fine cats
with great style
lounge about
in the alleys of
the universe.
about
our argument to night
what ever it was
about
and
no matter
how unhappy
it made us
feel
remember that
there is a
cat
somewhere
adjusting to the
space of itself
with a delightful
grace
in other words
magic persists
without us
no matter what
we may try to do
to spoil it.
Destroying Beauty
a rose
red sunlight;
I take it apart
in the garage
like a puzzle:
the petals are as greasy
as old bacon
and fall
like the maidens of the world
backs to floor
and I look up
at the old calendar
hung from a nail
and touch
my wrinkled face
and smile
because
the secret
is beyond me.
peace
near the corner table in the
cafe
a middle-aged couple
sit.
they have finished their
meal
and they are each drinking a
beer.
it is 9 in the evening.
she is smoking a
cigarette.
then he says something.
she nods.
then she speaks.
he grins, moves his
hand.
then they are
quiet.
through the blinds next to
their table
flashing red neon
blinks on and
off.
there is no war.
there is no hell.
then he raises his beer
bottle.
it is green.
he lifts it to his lips,
tilts it.
it is a coronet.
her right elbow is
on the table
and in her hand
she holds the
cigarette
between her thumb and
forefinger
and
as she watches
him
the streets outside
flower
in the
night.
afternoons into night
looking out the window
smoking rolled cigarettes
drinking Sanka
and watching the workers
come on in
I wonder, how much longer
can I get away with this?
stories and poems and
paintings
surviving on that.
an insane girlfriend
years younger
who loves me
types at her novel
in the kitchen.
my stories, my poems…
what is a poem?
a book by Céline sits on
the edge of the bathtub.
I read it when I bathe
and laugh.
the workers come in now
I see their faces,
the insides scraped away,
the outsides
missing.
I’ve had their jobs,
their goldfish
security.
Segovia plays to me
so softly from the
radio, the daylight’s going.
look here—
the trip’s been worth it,
while the jetliners go to New York and
Georgia and Texas
I sit surrounded by hymns that
nobody can ever take away
as the workers bend over
hot soup and cold
wives.
(uncollected)
we ain’t got no
money, honey, but we got rain
call it the green house effect or what ever
but it just doesn’t rain like it
used to.
I particularly remember the rains of the
depression era.
there wasn’t any money but there was
plenty of rain.
it wouldn’t rain for just a night or
a day,
it would RAIN for 7 days and 7
nights
and in Los Angeles the storm drains
weren’t built to carry off that much
water
and the rain came down THICK and
MEAN and
STEADY
and you HEARD it banging against
the roofs and into the ground
waterfalls of it came down
from the roofs
and often there was HAIL
big ROCKS OF ICE
bombing
exploding
smashing into things
and the rain
just wouldn’t
STOP
and all the roofs leaked—
cooking pots
were placed all about;
they dripped loudly
and had to be emptied
again and
again.
the rain came up over the street curbings,
across the lawns, climbed the steps and
entered the houses.
there were mops and bathroom towels,
and the rain often came up through the
toilets: bubbling, brown, crazy, whirling,
and the old cars stood in the streets,
cars that had problems starting on a
sunny day,
and the jobless men stood
looking out the windows
at the old machines dying
like living things
out there.
the jobless men,
failures in a failing time
were imprisoned in their houses with their
wives and children
and their
pets.
the pets refused to go out
and left their waste in
strange places.
the jobless men went mad
confined with
their once beautiful wives.
there were terrible arguments
as notices of foreclosure
fell into the mailbox.
rain and hail, cans of beans,
bread without butter; fried
eggs, boiled eggs, poached
eggs; peanut butter
sandwiches, and an invisible
chicken
in every pot.
my father, never a good man
at best, beat my mother
when it rained
as I threw myself
between them,
the legs, the knees, the
screams
until they
separated.
“I’ll kill you,” I screamed
at him. “You hit her again
and I’ll kill you!”
“Get that son-of-a-bitching
kid out of here!”
“no, Henry, you stay with
your mother!”
all the house holds were under
siege but I believe that ours
held more terror than the
average.
and at night
as we attempted to sleep
the rains still came down
and it was in bed
in the dark
watching the moon against
the scarred window
so bravely
holding out
most of the rain,
I thought of Noah and the
Ark
and I thought, it has come
again.
we all thought
that.
and then, at once, it would
stop.
and it always seemed to
stop
around 5 or 6 a.m.,
peaceful then,
but not an exact silence
because things continued to
drip
drip
drip
and there was no smog then
and by 8 a.m.
there was a
blazing yellow sunlight,
van Gogh yellow—
crazy, blinding!
and then
the roof drains
relieved of the rush of
water
began to expand in
the warmth:
PANG! PANG! PANG!
and everybody got up
and looked outside
and there were all the lawns
still soaked
greener than green will ever
be
and there were the birds
on the lawn
CHIRPING like mad,
they hadn’t eaten decently
for 7 days and 7 nights
and they were weary of
berries
and
they waited as the worms
rose to the top,
half-drowned worms.
the birds plucked them
up
and gobbled them
down; there were
blackbirds and sparrows.
the blackbirds tried to
drive the sparrows off
but the sparrows,
maddened with hunger,
smaller and quicker,
got their
due.
the men stood on their porches
smoking cigarettes,
now knowing
they’d have to go out
there
to look for that job
that probably wasn’t
there, to start that car
that probably wouldn’t
start.
and the once beautiful
wives
stood in their bathrooms
combing their hair,
applying makeup,
trying to put their world back
together again,
trying to forget that
awful sadness that
gripped them,
wondering what they could
fix for
breakfast.
and on the radio
we were told that
school was now
open.
and
soon
there I was
on the way to school,
massive puddles in the
street,
the sun like a new
world,
my parents back in that
house,
I arrived at my classroom
on time.
Mrs. Sorenson greeted us
with, “we won’t have our
usual recess, the grounds
are too wet.”
“AW!” most of the boys
went.
“but we are going to do
something special at
recess,” she went on,
“and it will be
fun!”
well, we all wondered
what that would
be
and the two-hour wait
seemed a long time
as Mrs. Sorenson
went about
teaching her
lessons.
I looked at the little
girls, they all looked so
pretty and clean and
alert,
they sat still and
straight
and their hair was
beautiful
in the California
sunshine.
then the recess bell rang
and we all waited for the
fun.
then Mrs. Sorenson to
ld
us:
“now, what we are going to
do is we are going to tell
each other what we did
during the rainstorm!
we’ll begin in the front
row and go right around!
now, Michael, you’re
first!…”
well, we all began to tell
our stories, Michael began
and it went on and on,
and soon we realized that
we were all lying, not
exactly lying but mostly
lying and some of the boys
began to snicker and some
of the girls began to give
them dirty looks and
Mrs. Sorenson said,
“all right, I demand a
modicum of silence
here!
I am interested in what
you did
during the rainstorm
even if you
aren’t!”
so we had to tell our
stories and they were
stories.
one girl said that
when the rainbow first
came
she saw God’s face
at the end of it.
only she didn’t say
which end.
one boy said he stuck
his fishing pole
out the window
and caught a little
fish
and fed it to his
cat.
almost everybody told