The Pleasures of the Damned

  like an everlasting 4th of July,

  and I too seem to swell inside,

  a kind of unknown bursting, a

  feeling, perhaps, that there isn’t any

  enemy

  anywhere.

  and I reach down into the box

  and there is

  nothing—not even a

  letter from the gas co. saying they will

  shut it off

  again.

  not even a short note from my x-wife

  bragging about her present

  happiness.

  my hand searches the mailbox in a kind of

  disbelief long after the mind has

  given up.

  there’s not even a dead fly

  down in there.

  I am a fool, I think, I should have known it

  works like this.

  I go inside as all the flowers leap to

  please me.

  anything? the woman

  asks.

  nothing, I answer, what’s for

  breakfast?

  spring swan

  swans die in the Spring too

  and there it floated

  dead on a Sunday

  sideways

  circling in the current

  and I walked to the rotunda

  and overhead

  gods in chariots

  dogs, women

  circled,

  and death

  ran down my throat

  like a mouse,

  and I heard the people coming

  with their picnic bags

  and laughter,

  and I felt guilty

  for the swan

  as if death

  were a thing of shame

  and like a fool

  I walked away

  and left them

  my beautiful swan.

  how is your heart?

  during my worst times

  on the park benches

  in the jails

  or living with

  whores

  I always had this certain

  contentment—

  I wouldn’t call it

  happiness—

  it was more of an inner

  balance

  that settled for

  whatever was occurring

  and it helped in the

  factories

  and when relationships

  went wrong

  with the

  girls.

  it helped

  through the

  wars and the

  hangovers

  the backalley fights

  the

  hospitals.

  to awaken in a cheap room

  in a strange city and

  pull up the shade—

  this was the craziest kind of

  contentment

  and to walk across the floor

  to an old dresser with a

  cracked mirror—

  see myself, ugly,

  grinning at it all.

  what matters most is

  how well you

  walk through the

  fire.

  closing time

  around 2 a.m.

  in my small room

  after turning off the poem

  machine

  for now

  I continue to light

  cigarettes and listen to

  Beethoven on the

  radio.

  I listen with a

  strange and lazy

  aplomb,

  knowing there’s still a poem

  or two left to write, and

  I feel damn

  fine, at long

  last,

  as once again I

  admire the verve and gamble

  of this composer

  now dead for over 100

  years,

  who’s younger and wilder

  than you are

  than I am.

  the centuries are sprinkled

  with rare magic

  with divine creatures

  who help us get past the common

  and

  extraordinary ills

  that beset us.

  I light the next to last

  cigarette

  remember all the 2 a.m.s

  of my past,

  put out of the bars

  at closing time,

  put out on the streets

  (a ragged band of

  solitary lonely

  humans

  we were)

  each walking home

  alone.

  this is much better: living

  where I now

  live

  and listening to

  the reassurance

  the kindness

  of this unexpected

  SYMPHONY OF TRIUMPH:

  a new life.

  racetrack parking lot at the end of the day

  I watch them push the crippled and the infirm

  in their wheelchairs

  on to the electric lift

  which carries them up into the long bus

  where each chair is locked down

  and each person has a window

  of their own.

  they are all white-skinned, like

  pale paint on thin cardboard;

  most of them are truly old;

  there are a number of women, a few old

  men, and 3 surprisingly young men

  2 of whom wear neck braces that gleam

  in the late afternoon sun

  and all 3 with arms as thin as

  rope and hands that resemble clenched

  claws.

  the caretaker seems very kind, very

  understanding, he’s a

  marvelous fat fellow with a

  rectangular head and he wears a broad

  smile which is not

  false.

  the old women are either extremely thin

  or overweight.

  most have humped backs and shoulders

  and wispy

  very straight

  white hair.

  they sit motionless, look straight

  ahead as the electric lift raises them

  on to the bus.

  there is no conversation;

  they appear calm and not embittered

  by their plight. both men and women

  are soon loaded on to the waiting bus except for

  the last one, a very old man, almost skeletal,

  with a tiny round head, completely bald, a

  shining white dot against the late afternoon sky,

  waving a cane above his head as he is

  pushed shouting on to the electric lift:

  “WELL, THEY ROBBED OUR ASSES

  AGAIN, CLEANED US OUT, WE’RE A

  BUNCH OF SUCKERS TOTTERING ON THE

  EDGE OF OUR GRAVES AND WE LET THEM TAKE

  OUR LAST PENNY AGAIN!

  ” as he speaks

  he waves the cane above his head and

  cracks the marvelous fat fellow

  who is pushing his chair,

  cracks the cane against the side of

  the caretaker’s head.

  it’s a mighty blow and

  the attendant staggers, grabs

  hard at the back of the

  wheelchairas

  the old man yells: “OH, JERRY,

  I’M SORRY, I’M SO SORRY, WHAT CAN I

  DO? WHAT

  CAN I DO?”

  Jerry steadies himself, he is not badly hurt.

  it’s a small concussion but within an hour

  he will possess a knot the size of an

  apricot.

  “it’s all right, Sandy, only

  I’ve told you again and again, please

  be careful with that damned

  cane…”

  Sandy is pushed on to the electric

  lift, it rises and he disappears into r />
  the bus’s dark interior.

  then Jerry climbs slowly into the bus, takes

  the wheel, starts up, the door closes with a hiss,

  the bus begins to move to the exit,

  and on the back of the vehicle

  in bold white letters

  on dark blue background

  I see the words:

  HARBOR HOME OF LOVE.

  there

  the centerfielder

  turns

  rushes back

  reaches up his glove

  and

  snares the

  ball,

  we are all him for

  that moment,

  sucking the air

  into our

  gut.

  as the crowd roars like

  crazy

  we rifle the ball back

  through the

  miraculous

  air.

  Dinosauria, we

  born like this

  into this

  as the chalk faces smile

  as Mrs. Death laughs

  as the elevators break

  as political landscapes dissolve

  as the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree

  as the oily fish spit out their oily prey

  as the sun is masked

  we are

  born like this

  into this

  into these carefully mad wars

  into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness

  into bars where people no longer speak to each other

  into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings

  born into this

  into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die

  into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty

  into a country where the jails are full and the mad houses closed

  into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes

  born into this

  walking and living through this

  dying because of this

  muted because of this

  castrated

  debauched

  disinherited

  because of this

  fooled by this

  used by this

  pissed on by this

  made crazy and sick by this

  made violent

  made inhuman

  by this

  the heart is blackened

  the fingers reach for the throat

  the gun

  the knife

  the bomb

  the fingers reach toward an unresponsive god

  the fingers reach for the bottle

  the pill

  the powder

  we are born into this sorrowful deadliness

  we are born into a government 60 years in debt

  that soon will be unable to even pay the interest on that debt

  and the banks will burn

  money will be useless

  there will be open and unpunished murder in the streets

  it will be guns and roving mobs

  land will be useless

  food will become a diminishing return

  nuclear power will be taken over by the many

  explosions will continually shake the earth

  radiated robot men will stalk each other

  the rich and the chosen will watch from space platforms

  Dante’s Inferno will be made to look like a children’s playground

  the sun will not be seen and it will always be night

  trees will die

  all vegetation will die

  radiated men will eat the flesh of radiated men

  the sea will be poisoned

  the lakes and rivers will vanish

  rain will be the new gold

  the rotting bodies of men and animals will stink in the dark wind

  the last few survivors will be overtaken by new and hideous diseases

  and the space platforms will be destroyed by attrition

  the petering out of supplies

  the natural effect of general decay

  and there will be the most beautiful silence never heard

  born out of that.

  the sun still hidden there

  awaiting the next chapter.

  mind and heart

  unaccountably we are alone

  forever alone

  and it was meant to be

  that way,

  it was never meant

  to be any other way—

  and when the death struggle

  begins

  the last thing I wish to see

  is

  a ring of human faces

  hovering over me—

  better just my old friends,

  the walls of my self,

  let only them be there.

  I have been alone but seldom

  lonely.

  I have satisfied my thirst

  at the well

  of my self

  and that wine was good,

  the best I ever had,

  and to night

  sitting

  staring into the dark

  I now finally understand

  the dark and the

  light and everything

  in between.

  peace of mind and heart

  arrives

  when we accept what

  is:

  having been

  born into this

  strange life

  we must accept

  the wasted gamble of our

  days

  and take some satisfaction in

  the pleasure of

  leaving it all

  behind.

  cry not for me.

  grieve not for me.

  read

  what I’ve written

  then

  forget it

  all.

  drink from the well

  of your self

  and begin

  again.

  TB

  I had it for a year, really put in

  a lot of

  bedroom time, slept upright on

  two pillows to keep from coughing,

  all the blood drained from my head

  and often I’d awaken to find myself

  slipping sideways off the

  bed.

  since my TB was contagious I didn’t

  have any visitors and the phone

  stopped ringing

  and that was the lucky

  part.

  during the day I tried TV and food,

  neither of which went down very

  well.

  the soap operas and the talk shows

  were a

  daytime nightmare,

  so for the lack of anything else

  to do

  I watched the baseball

  games

  and led the Dodgers to a

  pennant.

  not much else for me to do

  except take antibiotics and the cough

  medicine.

  I also really saved putting

  mileage on the car

  and missed the hell out of

  the old race

  track.

  you realize when you’re

  plucked out of the mainstream that

  it doesn’t need you or

  anybody else.

  the birds don’t notice you’re gone,

  the flowers don’t care,

  the people out there don’t notice,

  but the IRS,

  the phone co.,

  the gas and electric co.,

  the DMV, etc.,

  they keep in touch.

  being very sick and being dead are

  very much the same

  in society’s

  eye.

  either way,

  you might just as well

  lay back and

  enjoy it.
/>
  crime does pay

  the rooms at the hospital went for

  $550 a day.

  that was for the room alone.

  the amazing thing, though, was that

  in some of the rooms

  prisoners were

  lodged.

  I saw them chained to their beds,

  usually by an

  ankle.

  $550 a day, plus meals,

  now that’s luxury

  living—plus first-rate medical attention

  and two guards

  on watch.

  and here I was with my cancer,

  walking down the halls in my

  robe

  thinking, if I live through this

  it will take me years to

  pay off the hospital

  while the prisoners won’t owe

  a damned

  thing.

  not that I didn’t have some

  sympathy for those fellows

  but when you consider that

  when something like a bullet

  in one of your buttocks

  gets you all that free attention,

  medical and otherwise,

  plus no billing later

  from the hospital business

  office, maybe I had chosen

  the wrong

  occupation?

  the orderly

  I am sitting on a tin chair outside the x-ray lab as

  death, on stinking wings, wafts through the

  halls forevermore.