The Pleasures of the Damned

  “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