“take 4 of those bottles.”
I did.
she didn’t offer me a bag so I stuck
them in my pockets.
“that’ll be $143,” she said.
“$143?” I asked.
“it’s for the pills,” she said.
I pulled out my credit card.
“oh, we don’t take credit cards,” she told
me.
“but I don’t have that much money on
me.”
“how much do you have?”
I looked in my wallet.
“23 dollars.”
“we’ll take that and bill you for the
rest.”
I handed her the money.
“see you in 30 days,” she smiled.
I walked out and into the waiting room.
the man who had been waiting an hour and
a half was still there.
I walked out into the hall, found the
elevator.
then I was on the first floor and out
into the parking lot.
my car was still a football field
away
and my right leg began to hurt like hell,
after all that twisting Dr.
Manx had done to it.
I moved slowly to my car, got in.
it started and soon I was out on the
boulevard again.
the 4 bottles of pills bulged painfully in my
pockets as I drove along.
now I only had one problem left, I had
to tell my wife
I had a Mystery Leg.
I could hear her already:
“what? you mean he couldn’t tell
you what was wrong with your
leg?
what do you mean, he didn’t
know?
and what are those PILLS?
here, let me see those!”
as I drove along, I switched on the
radio in search of some soothing
music.
there wasn’t any.
the girl outside the supermarket
a very tall girl lifts her nose at me
outside a supermarket
as if I were a walking garbage
can; and I had no desire for her,
no more desire
than for a
phone pole.
what was her message?
that I would never see the top of her
pantyhose?
I am a man in his 50s
sex is no longer an aching mystery
to me, so I can’t understand
being snubbed by a
phone pole.
I’ll leave young girls to young
men.
it’s a lonely world
of frightened people,
just as it has always
been.
(uncollected)
it is not much
I suppose like others
I have come through fire and sword,
love gone wrong,
head-on crashes, drunk at sea,
and I have listened to the simple sound of water running
in tubs
and wished to drown
but simply couldn’t bear the others
carrying my body down three flights of stairs
to the round mouths of curious biddies;
the psyche has been burned
and left us senseless,
the world has been darker than lights out
in a closet full of hungry bats,
and the whiskey and wine entered our veins
when blood was too weak to carry on;
and it will happen to others,
and our few good times will be rare
because we have a critical sense
and are not easy to fool with laughter;
small gnats crawl our screen
but we see through
to a wasted landscape
and let them have their moment;
we only asked for leopards to guard
our thinning dreams.
I once lay in a
white hospital
for the dying and the dying
self, where some god pissed a rain of
reason to make things grow
only to die, where on my knees
I prayed for LIGHT,
I prayed for 1*i*g*h*t,
and praying
crawled like a blind slug into the
web
where threads of wind stuck against my mind
and I died of pity
for Man, for myself,
on a cross without nails,
watching in fear as
the pig belches in his sty, farts,
blinks and eats.
2 Outside, As Bones Break
in My Kitchen
they get up on their garage roof
both of them 80 or 90 years old
standing on the slant
she wanting to fall really
all the way
but hacking at the old roofing
with a hoe
and he
more coward
on his knees praying for more days
gluing chunks of tar
his ear listening
for more green rain
more green rain
and he says
mama be careful
and she says nothing
and hacks a hole
where a tulip
never grew.
The Japanese Wife
O lord, he said, Japanese women,
real women, they have not forgotten,
bowing and smiling
closing the wounds men have made;
but American women will kill you like they
tear a lampshade,
American women care less than a dime,
they’ve gotten derailed,
they’re too nervous to make good:
always scowling, belly-aching,
disillusioned, overwrought;
but oh lord, say, the Japanese women:
there was this one,
I came home and the door was locked
and when I broke in she broke out the bread knife
and chased me under the bed
and her sister came
and they kept me under that bed for two days,
and when I came out, at last,
she didn’t mention attorneys,
just said, you will never wrong me again,
and I didn’t; but she died on me,
and dying, said, you can wrong me now,
and I did,
but you know, I felt worse then
than when she was living;
there was no voice, no knife,
nothing but little Japanese prints on the wall,
all those tiny people sitting by red rivers
with flying green birds,
and I took them down and put them face down
in a drawer with my shirts,
and it was the first time I realized
that she was dead, even though I buried her;
and some day I’ll take them all out again,
all the tan-faced little people
sitting happily by their bridges and huts
and mountains—
but not right now,
not just yet.
the harder you try
the waste of words
continues with a stunning
persistence
as the waiter runs by carrying the loaded
tray
for all the wise white boys who laugh at
us.
no matter. no matter,
as long as your shoes are tied and
nobody is walking too close
behind.
just being able to scratch yourself and
be nonchalant is victory
enough.
those constipate
d minds that seek
larger meaning
will be dispatched with the other
garbage.
back off.
if there is light
it will find
you.
the lady in red
people went into vacant lots and pulled up greens to cook and the men rolled Bull Durham or smoked Wings (10¢ a pack) and the dogs were thin and the cats were thin and the cats learned how to catch mice and rats and the dogs caught and killed the cats (some of the cats), and gophers tore up the earth and people killed them by attaching garden hoses to the exhaust pipes of their cars and sticking the hoses into the gopher holes and when the gophers came out the cats and the dogs and the people were afraid of them, they circled and showed their long thin teeth, then they stopped and shivered and as they did the cats rushed in followed by the dogs. people raised chickens in their back yards and the roosters were weak and the hens were thin and the people ate them if they didn’t lay eggs fast enough, and the best time of all was when John Dillinger escaped from jail, and one of the saddest times of all was when the Lady in Red fingered him and he was gunned down coming out of that movie.
Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson, Machine Gun Kelly, Ma Barker, Alvin Karpis, we loved them all. and there were always wars starting in China and they never lasted long but the newspapers had big black headlines: WAR IN CHINA! the ’30s were a time when people had very little and there was nothing to hide behind, and that Bull Durham tag dangling from the string coming out of your pocket—that showed you had it, you could roll with one hand—plenty of time to practice and if somebody looked at you wrong or said something you didn’t like you cracked him one right in the mouth. it was a glorious non-bullshit time, especially after we got rid of Herbert Hoover.
the shower
we like to shower afterwards
(I like the water hotter than she)
and her face is always soft and peaceful
and she’ll wash me first
spread the soap over my balls
lift the balls
squeeze them,
then wash the cock:
“hey, this thing is still hard!”
then get all the hair down there,—
the belly, the back, the neck, the legs,
I grin grin grin,
and then I wash her…
first the cunt, I
stand behind her, my cock in the cheeks of her ass
I gently soap up the cunt hairs,
wash there with a soothing motion,
I linger perhaps longer than necessary,
then I get the backs of the legs, the ass,
the back, the neck, I turn her, kiss her,
soap up the breasts, get them and the belly, the neck,
the fronts of the legs, the ankles, the feet,
and then the cunt, once more, for luck…
another kiss, and she gets out first,
toweling, sometimes singing while I stay in
turn the water on hotter
feeling the good times of love’s miracle
I then get out…
it is usually mid-afternoon and quiet,
and getting dressed we talk about what else
there might be to do,
but being together solves most of it,
in fact, solves all of it
for as long as those things stay solved
in the history of woman and
man, it’s different for each
better and worse for each—
for me, it’s splendid enough to remember
past the marching of armies
and the horses that walk the streets outside
past the memories of pain and defeat and unhappiness:
Linda, you brought it to me,
when you take it away
do it slowly and easily
make it as if I were dying in my sleep instead of in
my life, amen.
i was glad
I was glad I had money in the Savings and Loan
Friday afternoon hungover
I didn’t have a job
I was glad I had money in the Savings and Loan
I didn’t know how to play a guitar
Friday afternoon hungover
Friday afternoon hungover
across the street from Norm’s
across the street from The Red Fez
I was glad I had money in the Savings and Loan
split with my girlfriend and blue and demented
I was glad to have my passbook and stand in line
I watched the buses run up Vermont
I was too crazy to get a job as a driver of buses
and I didn’t even look at the young girls
I got dizzy standing in line but I
just kept thinking I have money in this building
Friday afternoon hungover
I didn’t know how to play the piano
or even hustle a damnfool job in a carwash
I was glad I had money in the Savings and Loan
finally I was at the window
it was my Japanese girl
she smiled at me as if I were some amazing god
back again, eh? she said and laughed
as I showed her my withdrawal slip and my passbook
as the buses ran up and down Vermont
the camels trotted across the Sahara
she gave me the money and I took the money
Friday afternoon hungover
I walked into the market and got a cart
and I threw sausages and eggs and bacon and bread in there
I threw beer and salami and relish and pickles and mustard in there
I looked at the young house wives wiggling casually
I threw t-bone steaks and porter house and cube steaks in my cart
and tomatoes and cucumbers and oranges in my cart
Friday afternoon hungover
split with my girlfriend and blue and demented
I was glad I had money in the Savings and Loan.
the angel who pushed his wheelchair
long ago he edited a little magazine
it was up in San Francisco
during the beat era
during the reading-poetry-with-jazz experiments
and I remember him because he never returned my manuscripts
even though I wrote him many letters,
humble letters, sane letters, and, at last, violent letters;
I’m told he jumped off a roof
because a woman wouldn’t love him.
no matter. when I saw him again
he was in a wheelchair and carried a wine bottle to piss in;
he wrote very delicate poetry
that I, naturally, couldn’t understand;
he autographed his book for me
(which he said I wouldn’t like)
and once at a party I threatened to punch him and
I was drunk and he wept and
I took pity and instead hit the next poet who walked by
on the head with his piss bottle; so,
we had an understanding after all.
he had this very thin and intense woman
pushing him about, she was his arms and legs and
maybe for a while
his heart.
it was almost commonplace
at poetry readings where he was scheduled to read
to see her swiftly rolling him in,
sometimes stopping by me, saying,
“I don’t see how we are going to get him up on the stage!”
sometimes she did. often she did.
then she began writing poetry, I didn’t see much of it,
but, somehow, I was glad for her.
then she injured her neck while doing her yoga
and she went on disability, and again I was glad for her,
all the poets wanted to get disability insurance
it was better than immortality. r />
I met her in the market one day
in the bread section, and she held my hands and
trembled all over
and I wondered if they ever had sex
those two. well, they had the muse anyhow
and she told me she was writing poetry and articles
but really more poetry, she was really writing a lot,
and that’s the last I saw of her
until one night somebody told me she’d o.d.’d
and I said, no, not her
and they said, yes, her.
it was a day or so later
sometime in the afternoon
I had to go to the Los Feliz post office
to mail some dirty stories to a sex mag.
coming back
outside a church
I saw these smiling creatures
so many of them smiling
the men with beards and long hair and wearing
blue jeans
and most of the women blonde
with sunken cheeks and tiny grins,
and I thought, ah, a wedding,
a nice old-fashioned wedding,
and then I saw him on the sidewalk
in his wheelchair
tragic yet somehow calm
looking grayer, a profile like a tamed hawk,
and I knew it was her funeral,
she had really o.d.’d
and he did look tragic out there.
I do have feelings, you know.
maybe to night I’ll try to read his book.
a time to remember
at North Avenue 21 drunk tank you slept on the floor and at night
there was always some guy who would step on your face on his