The Pleasures of the Damned
nothing and everything,
the face melting down to the last puff
in a cellar in Corpus Christi.
there’s something for the touts, the nuns,
the grocery clerks and you…
something at 8 a.m., something in the library
something in the river,
everything and nothing.
in the slaughter house it comes running along
the ceiling on a hook, and you swing it—
one
two
three
and then you’ve got it, $200 worth of dead
meat, its bones against your bones
something and nothing.
it’s always early enough to die and
it’s always too late,
and the drill of blood in the basin white
it tells you nothing at all
and the gravediggers playing poker over
5 a.m. coffee, waiting for the grass
to dismiss the frost…
they tell you nothing at all.
we have everything and we have nothing—
days with glass edges and the impossible stink
of river moss—worse than shit;
checkerboard days of moves and countermoves,
fagged interest, with as much sense in defeat as
in victory; slow days like mules
humping it slagged and sullen and sun-glazed
up a road where a madman sits waiting among
blue jays and wrens netted in and sucked a flakey
gray.
good days too of wine and shouting, fights
in alleys, fat legs of women striving around
your bowels buried in moans,
the signs in bullrings like diamonds hollering
Mother Capri, violets coming out of the ground
telling you to forget the dead armies and the loves
that robbed you.
days when children say funny and brilliant things
like savages trying to send you a message through
their bodies while their bodies are still
alive enough to transmit and feel and run up
and down without locks and paychecks and
ideals and possessions and beetle-like
opinions.
days when you can cry all day long in
a green room with the door locked, days
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.
blue beads and bones
as the orchid dies
and the grass goes
insane, let’s have one for the lost:
I met an old man
and a tired whore
in a bar
at 8:00 in the morning
across from MacArthur Park—
we were sitting over our beers
he and I and the old whore
who had slept in an unlocked car
the night before
and wore a blue necklace.
the old guy said to me:
“look at my arms. I’m all bone.
no meat on me.”
and he pulled back his sleeves
and he was right—
bone with just a layer of skin
hanging like paper.
he said, “I don’t eat
nothin’.”
I bought him a beer and the
whore a beer.
now there, I thought, is a man
who doesn’t eat
meat, he doesn’t eat
vegetables. kind of a saint.
it was li
ke a church in there
as only the truly lost
sit in bars on Tuesday mornings
at 8:00 a.m.
then the whore said, “Jesus,
if I don’t score to night I’m
finished. I’m scared, I’m really
scared. you guys can go to skid row
when things get bad. but where can a
woman go?”
we couldn’t answer her.
she picked up her beer with one hand
and played with her blue beads with the
other.
I finished my beer, went to the
corner and got a Racing Form from Teddy the
newsboy—age 61.
“you got a hot one today?”
“no, Teddy, I gotta see the board; money
makes them run.”
“I’ll give you 4 bucks. bet one for
me.”
I took his 4 bucks. that would buy a sandwich,
pay parking, plus 2
coffees. I got into my car, drove
off. too early for the
track. blue beads and bones. the
universe was
bent. a cop rode his bike right up
behind me. the day had really
begun.
like a cherry seed in the throat
naked in that bright
light
the four horse falls
and throws a 112-pound
boy into the hooves
of 35,000 eyes.
good night, sweet
little
motherfucker.
turnabout
she drives into the parking lot while
I am leaning up against the fender of my car.
she’s drunk and her eyes are wet with tears:
“you son of a bitch, you fucked me when you
didn’t want to. you told me to keep phoning
you, you told me to move closer into town,
then you told me to leave you alone.”
it’s all quite dramatic and I enjoy it.
“sure, well, what do you want?”
“I want to talk to you, I want to go to your
place and talk to you…”
“I’m with somebody now. she’s in getting a
sandwich.”
“I want to talk to you…it takes a while
to get over things. I need more time.”
“sure. wait until she comes out. we’re not
inhuman. we’ll all have a drink together.”
“shit,” she says, “oh shit!”
she jumps into her car and drives off.
the other one comes out: “who was that?”
“an ex-friend.”
now she’s gone and I’m sitting here drunk
and my eyes seem wet with tears.
it’s very quiet and I feel like I have a spear
rammed into the center of my gut.
I walk to the bathroom and puke.
mercy, I think, doesn’t the human race know anything
about mercy?
mystery leg
first of all, I had a hard time, a very hard time
locating the parking lot for the building.
it wasn’t off the main boulevard where
the cars all driven by merciless killers
were doing 55 mph in a 25 mph zone.
the man riding my bumper so
close I could see his snarling face
in my rearview mirror caused me
to miss the narrow alley that would have
allowed me to circle the west
end of the building in search of parking.
I went to the next street, took a right, then
took another right, spotted the building, a blue
heartless-looking structure, then took
another right and finally saw it, a tiny
sign: parking.
I drove in.
the guard had the wooden red and white
barrier down.
he stuck his head out a little window.
“yeah?” he asked.
he looked like a retired hit man.
“to see Dr. Manx,” I said.
he looked at me disdainfully, then said,
“go ahead!”
the red and white barrier lifted.
I drove in,
drove around and around.
I finally found a parking spot a good distance away,
a football field away.
I walked in.
I finally found the entrance and the elevator
and the floor
and then the office number.
I walked in.
the waiting room was full.
there was an old lady talking to the
receptionist.
“but can’t I see him now?”
“Mrs. Miller, you are here at the right time
but on the wrong day.
this is Wednesday, you’ll have to come
back Friday.”
“but I took a cab. I’m an old lady, I have almost
no money, can’t I see him now?”
“Mrs. Miller, I’m sorry but your appointment
is on Friday, you’ll have to come back
then.”
Mrs. Miller turned away: unwanted,
old and poor, she walked to the
door.
I stepped up smartly, informed them who I was.
I was told to sit down and wait.
I sat with the others.
then I noticed the magazine rack.
I walked over and looked at the magazines.
it was odd: they weren’t of recent
vintage: in fact, all of them were over a
year old.
I sat back down.
30 minutes passed.
45 minutes passed.
an hour passed.
the man next to me spoke:
“I’ve been waiting an hour and a half,” he
said.
“that’s hell,” I said, “they shouldn’t do that!”
he didn’t reply.
just then the receptionist called my
name.
I got up and told her that the other man had
been waiting an hour and a half.
she acted as if she hadn’t heard.
“please follow me,” she said.
I followed her down a dark hall, then she
opened a door, pointed. “in there,” she said.
I walked in and she closed the door behind me.
I sat down and looked at a map of
the human body hanging from the wall.
I could see the veins, the heart, the
intestines, all that.
it was cold in there and dark, darker
than in the hall.
I waited maybe 15 minutes before the door
opened.
it was Dr. Manx.
he was followed by a tired-looking young lady
in a white gown; she held a clipboard;
she looked depressed.
“well, now,” said Dr. Manx, “what is it?”
“it’s my leg,” I said.
I saw the lady writing on the clipboard.
she wrote LEG.
“what is it about the leg?” asked the Dr.
“it hurts,” I said.
PAIN wrote the lady.
then she saw me looking at the clipboard and
turned away.
“did you fill out the form they gave you at
the desk?” the Dr. asked.
“they didn’t give me a form,” I said.
“Florence,” he said, “give him a form.”
Florence pulled a form out from her
clipboard, handed it to me.
“fill that out,” said Dr. Manx, “we’ll be right
back.”
then they were gone and I worked at the
form.
&n
bsp; it was the usual: name, address, phone,
employer, relatives, etc.
there was also a long list of questions.
I marked them all “no.”
then I sat there.
20 minutes passed.
then they were back.
the doctor began twisting my leg.
“it’s the right leg,” I said.
“oh,” he said.
Florence wrote something on her
clipboard.
probably RIGHT LEG.
he switched to the right leg.
“does that hurt?”
“a little.”
“not real bad?”
“no.”
“does this hurt?”
“a little.”
“not real bad?”
“well, the whole leg hurts but when
you do that, it hurts more.”
“but not real bad?”
“what’s real bad?”
“like you can’t stand on it.”
“I can stand on it.”
“hmmm…stand up!”
“all right.”
“now, rock on your toes, back and
forth, back and forth.”
I did.
“hurt real bad?” he asked.
“just medium.”
“you know what?” Dr. Manx asked.
“no.”
“we’ve got a Mystery Leg here!”
Florence wrote something on the
clipboard.
“I have?”
“yes, I don’t know yet what’s wrong with
it.
I want you to come back in 30 days.”
“30 days?”
“yes, and stop at the desk on your
way out, see the girl.”
then they walked out.
at the checkout desk there was a long
row of bottles waiting, white bottles with
bright orange labels.
the girl at the desk looked at me.