THE DAYS RUN AWAY LIKE WILD HORSES OVER THE HILLS

CHARLES BUKOWSKI

for
Jane

Table of Contents

I.

what a man I was

mine

freedom

as the sparrow

his wife, the painter

down thru the marching

these things

poem for personnel managers:

ice for the eagles

plea to a passing maid

waste basket

::: the old movies

peace

I taste the ashes of your death

for Jane: with all the love I had, which was not enough:—

Uruguay or hell

notice

for Jane

conversation on a telephone

ants crawl my drunken arms

a literary discussion

watermelon

for one I knew

when Hugo Wolf went mad—

riot

meanwhile

a poem is a city

the cat

hermit in the city

II.

all-yellow flowers

what seems to be the trouble, gentlemen?

spring swan

remains

the moment of truth

on the fire suicides of the buddhists

a division

conversation with a lady sipping a straight shot

the way it will happen inside a can of peaches

scene in a tent outside the cotton fields of Bakersfield:

night animal

on the train to Del Mar

I thought of ships, of armies, hanging on…

war and piece

18 cars full of men thinking of what could have been

the screw-game

a night of Mozart

sleeping woman

when you wait for the dawn to crawl through the screen like a burglar to take your life away—

poem while looking at an encyclopedia:

3 lovers

did I ever tell you?

song of my typewriter:

and the moon and the stars and the world:

the sharks

fag, fag, fag

Ivan the Terrible

the bones of my uncle

a last shot on two good horses

III.

no grounding in the classics

drawing of a band concert on a matchbox

bad night

down by the wings

fire

one for the old man

a drawer of fish

L. Beethoven, half-back

self-destruction

these mad windows that taste life and cut me if I go through them

birth

on getting famous and being asked: can you recite? can you be there at nine?

the great one:

yellow

::: the days run away like wild horses over the hills

worms

to hell with Robert Schumann

the seminar

one for Ging, with klux top

communists

family, family

poem for the death of an American serviceman in Vietnam:

guilt obsession behind a cloud of rockets:

even the sun was afraid

on a grant

finish

the underground

from the Dept. of English

footnote upon the construction of the masses:

kaakaa & other immolations

a problem of temperament

poetess

the miracle

Mongolian coasts shining in light

about the author

other books by charles bukowski

cover

copyright

about the publisher

I

get your name in LIGHTS
get it up there in
8½ x 11 mimeo

what a man I was

I shot off his left ear

then his right,

and then tore off his belt buckle

with hot lead,

and then

I shot off everything that counts

and when he bent over

to pick up his drawers

and his marbles

(poor critter)

I fixed it so he wouldn’t have

to straighten up

no more.

Ho Hum.

I went in for a fast snort

and one guy seemed

to be looking at me sideways,

and that’s how he died—

sideways,

lookin’ at me

and clutchin’

for his marbles.

Sight o’ blood made me kinda

hungry.

Had a ham sandwich.

Played a couple of sentimental songs…

Shot out all the lights

and strolled outside.

Didn’t seem to be no one around

so I shot my horse

(poor critter).

Then I saw the Sheerf

a standin’ at the end a’ the road

and he was shakin’

like he had the Saint Vitus dance;

it was a real sorrowful sight

so I slowed him to a quiver

with the first slug

and mercifully stiffened him

with the second.

Then I laid on my back awhile

and I shot out the stars one by one

and then

I shot out the moon

and then I walked around

and shot out every light

in town,

and pretty soon it began to get dark

real dark

the way I like it;

just can’t stand to sleep

with no light shinin’

on my face.

I laid down and dreamt

I was a little boy again

a playin’ with my toy six-shooter

and winnin’ all the marble games,

and when I woke up

my guns was gone

and I was all bound hand and foot

just like somebody

was scared a me

and they was slippin’

a noose around my ugly neck

just as if they

meant to hang me,

and some guy was pinnin’

a real pretty sign

on my shirt:

there’s a law for you

and a law for me

and a law that hangs

from the foot of a tree.

Well, pretty poetry always did

make my eyes water

and can you believe it

all the women was cryin’

and though they was moanin’

other men’s names

I just know they was cryin’

for me (poor critters)

and though I’d slept with all a them,

I’d forgotten

in all the big excitement

to tell ’em my name

and all the men looked angry

but I guess it was because the kids

was all being impolite

and a throwin’ tin cans at me,

but I told ’em not to worry

because their aim was bad anyhow

not a boy there looked like he’d turn

into a man—

90% homosexuals, the lot of them,

and some guy shouted

“let’s send him to hell!”

and with a jerk I was dancin’

my last dance,

but I swung out wide

and spit in the bartender’s eye

and stared down

into Nellie Adam’s breasts,

and my mouth watered again.

mine

She lays like a lump

I can feel the great empty mountain

of her head.

But she is alive. She yawns and

scratches her nose and

pulls up the cover.

Soon I will kiss her goodnight

and we will sleep.

and far away is Scotland

and under the ground the

gophers run.

I hear engines in the night

and through the sky a white

hand whirls:

good night, dear, goodnight.

freedom

he drank wine all night the night of the

28th. and he kept thinking of her:

the way she walked and talked and loved

the way she told him things that seemed true

but were not, and he knew the color of each

of her dresses

and her shoes—he knew the stock and curve of

each heel

as well as the leg shaped by it.

and she was out again when he came home, and

she’d come back with the special stink again,

and she did

she came in at 3 a.m. in the morning

filthy like a dung-eating swine

and

he took out the butcher knife

and she screamed

backing into the roominghouse wall

still pretty somehow

in spite of love’s reek

and he finished the glass of wine.

that yellow dress

his favorite

and she screamed again.

and he took up the knife

and unhooked his belt

and tore away the cloth before her

and cut off his balls.

and carried them in his hands

like apricots

and flushed them down the

toilet bowl

and she kept screaming

as the room became red

GOD O GOD!

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?

and he sat there holding 3 towels

between his legs

not caring now whether she left or

stayed

wore yellow or green or

anything at all.

and one hand holding and one hand

lifting he poured

another wine.

as the sparrow

To give life you must take life,

and as our grief falls flat and hollow

upon the billion-blooded sea

I pass upon serious inward-breaking shoals rimmed

with white-legged, white-bellied rotting creatures

lengthily dead and rioting against surrounding scenes.

Dear child, I only did to you what the sparrow

did to you; I am old when it is fashionable to be

young; I cry when it is fashionable to laugh.

I hated you when it would have taken less courage

to love.

his wife, the painter

There are sketches on the walls of men and women and ducks,

and outside a large green bus swerves through traffic like

insanity sprung from a waving line; Turgenev, Turgenev,

says the radio, and Jane Austen, Jane Austen, too.

“I am going to do her portrait on the 28th, while you are

at work.”

He is just this edge of fat and he walks constantly, he

fritters; they have him; they are eating him hollow like

a webbed fly, and his eyes are red-suckled with anger-fear.

He feels the hatred and discard of the world, sharper than

his razor, and his gut-feel hangs like a wet polyp; and he

self-decisions himself defeated trying to shake his

hung beard from razor in water (like life), not warm enough.

Daumier. Rue Transnonain, le 15 Avril, 1843. (Lithograph.)

Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale.

“She has a face unlike that of any woman I have ever known.”

“What is it? A love affair?”

“Silly. I can’t love a woman. Besides, she’s pregnant.”

I can paint—a flower eaten by a snake; that sunlight is a

lie; and that markets smell of shoes and naked boys clothed,

and under everything some river, some beat, some twist that

clambers along the edge of my temple and bites nip-dizzy…

men drive cars and paint their houses,

but they are mad; men sit in barber chairs; buy hats.

Corot. Recollection of Mortefontaine.

Paris, Louvre.

“I must write Kaiser, though I think he’s a homosexual.”

“Are you still reading Freud?”

“Page 299.”

She made a little hat and he fastened two snaps under one

arm, reaching up from the bed like a long feeler from the

snail, and she went to church, and he thought now I h’ve

time and the dog.

About church: the trouble with a mask is it

never changes.

So rude the flowers that grow and do not grow beautiful.

So magic the chair on the patio that does not hold legs

and belly and arm and neck and mouth that bites into the

wind like the end of a tunnel.

He turned in bed and thought: I am searching for some

segment in the air. It floats about the people’s heads.

When it rains on the trees it sits between the branches

warmer and more blood-real than the dove.

Orozco. Christ Destroying the Cross.

Hanover, Dartmouth College, Baker Library.

He burned away in sleep.

down thru the marching

they came down thru the marching,

down thru St. Paul, St. Louis, Atlanta,

Memphis, New Orleans, they came

down thru the marching, thru

balloons and popcorn, past drugstores

and blondes and whirling cats,

they came down thru the marching

scaring the goats and the kids in

the fields, banging against the minds

of the sick in their hot beds, and

down in the cellar I got out the

colt. I ripped a hole in the screen

for better vision and when the legs

came walking by on top of my head,

I got a colonel, a major and 3 lieutenants

before the band stopped playing;

and now it’s like a war, uniforms

everywhere, behind cars and brush,

and plang plang plang

my cellar is all fireworks, and I

fire back, the colt as hot as a

baked potato, I fire back and sing

sing, “Mine eyes have seen the glory

of the coming of the Lord; He is

tramping out the vintage…”

these things

these things that we support most well

have nothing to do with us,

and we do with them

out of of boredom or fear or money

or cracked intelligence;

our circle and our candle of light

being small,

so small we cannot bear it,

we heave out with Idea

and lose the Center:

all wax without the wick,

and we see names that once meant wisdom,

like signs into ghost towns,

and only the graves are real.

poem for personnel managers:

An old man asked me for a cigarette

and I carefully dealt out two.

“Been lookin’ for job. Gonna stand

in the sun and smoke.”

He was close to rags and rage

and he leaned against death.

It was a cold day, indeed, and trucks

loaded and heavy as old whores

banged and tangled on the streets…

We drop like planks from a rotting floor

as the world strives to unlock the bone

that weights its brain.

(God is a lonely place without steak.)

We are dying birds

we are sinking ships—

the world rocks down against us

and we

throw out our arms

and we

throw out our legs

like the death kiss of the centipede:

but they kindly snap our backs

and call our poison “politics.”

Well, we smoked, he and I—little men

nibbling fish-head thoughts…

All the horses do not come in,

and as you watch the lights of the jails

and hospitals wink on and out,

and men handle flags as carefully as babies,

remember this:

you are a great-gutted instrument of

heart and belly, carefully planned—

so if you take a plane for Savannah,

take the best plane;

or if you eat chicken on a rock,

make it a very special animal.

(You call it a bird; I call birds

flowers.)

And if you decide to kill somebody,

make it anybody and not somebody:

some men are made of more special, precious

parts: do not kill

if you will

a president or a King

or a man

behind a desk—

these have heavenly longitudes

enlightened attitudes.

If you decide,

take us

who stand and smoke and glower;

we are rusty with sadness and

feverish

with climbing broken ladders.

Take us:

we were never children

like your children.

We do not understand love songs

like your inamorata.

Our faces are cracked linoleum,

cracked through with the heavy, sure

feet of our masters.

We are shot through with carrot tops

and poppyseed and tilted grammar;

we waste days like mad blackbirds

and pray for alcoholic nights.

Our silk-sick human smiles wrap around

us like somebody else’s confetti:

we do not even belong to the Party.

We are a scene chalked-out with the

sick white brush of Age.

We smoke, asleep as a dish of figs.

We smoke, dead as a fog.

Take us.

A bathtub murder

or something quick and bright; our names

in the papers.

Known, at last, for a moment

to millions of careless and grape-dull eyes

that hold themselves private

to only flicker and flame

at the poor cracker-barrel jibes

of their conceited, pampered correct comedians.

Known, at last, for a moment,

as they will be known

and as you will be known

by an all-gray man on an all-gray horse

who sits and fondles a sword

longer than the night

longer than the mountain’s aching backbone

longer than all the cries

that have a-bombed up out of throats

and exploded in a newer, less-planned

land.

We smoke and the clouds do not notice us.

A cat walks by and shakes Shakespeare off of his back.

Tallow, tallow, candle like wax: our spines

are limp and our consciousness burns

guilelessly away

the remaining wick life has

doled out to us.

An old man asked me for a cigarette

and told me his troubles

and this

is what he said:

that Age was a crime

and that Pity picked up the marbles

and that Hatred picked up the

cash.

He might have been your father

or mine.

He might have been a sex-fiend

or a saint.

But whatever he was,

he was condemned

and we stood in the sun and

smoked

and looked around

in our leisure

to see who was next in

line.

ice for the eagles

I keep remembering the horses

under the moon

I keep remembering feeding the horses

sugar

white oblongs of sugar

more like ice,

and they had heads like

eagles

bald heads that could bite and

did not.

The horses were more real than

my father

more real than God

and they could have stepped on my

feet but they didn’t

they could have done all kinds of horrors

but they didn’t.

I was almost 5

but I have not forgotten yet;

o my god they were strong and good

those red tongues slobbering

out of their souls.

plea to a passing maid

girl in shorts, biting your nails, revolving your ass,

the boys are looking at you—

you hold more, it seems,

than Gauguin or Brahma or Balzac,

more, at least, than the skulls that swim at our feet,

your swagger breaks the Eiffel tower,

turns the heads of old newsboys long ago gone

sexually to pot;

your caged malarkey, your idiot’s dance,

mugging it, delightful—don’t ever wash stained under-

wear or chase your acts of love

through neighborhood alleys—

don’t spoil it for us,

putting on weight and weariness,

settling for TV and a namby-pamby husband;

don’t give up that absurd dispossessed wiggle

to water a Saturday’s front lawn—

don’t send us back to Balzac or introspection

or Paris

or wine, don’t send us back

to the incubation of our doubts or the memory

of death-wiggle, bitch, madden us with love

and hunger, keep the sharks, the bloody sharks,

from the heart.

waste basket

spoor and anemia and deviltry

and what can we make of this?:

a belly in the trash…

down by Mr. Saunders’ beer cans

curled up like a cat;

life can be no less ludicrous

than rain

and as I take the lift

up to 3

I pass Mrs. Swanson

in the grate

powdered and really dead

but walking on

buying sweets and fats

and mailing Christmas cards;

and opening the door to my room

a fat damsel scrambles my vision

bottles fall

and a voice says

why are all your poems

personal?

::: the old movies

were best, the French F. Legion

every man with a bitch and the Arabs charging down

on white parade ponies, and the Sarge’t holding the

fort by propping up dead men until re’forcemnts arriv’l.

And the ones with the boys flying around in the Spads

full of wire and one plat. blonde who seemed to symbolize

everything. Maybe it was just because I was a kid

or maybe it isn’t the same any more. All the angles,

the cautious patriots, the air-raid wardens, cigarettes

for sex, and even the enemy seeming to play a game.

Or the time they found the Jap nurse in the shell-hole

who had been hit in the breast and wanted some sulfa

and one of the boys said, “Hey, you think we can fuck

her before she dies?”

peace

I thought the dove was the bird of peace

but here they were shooting them out

of the brush

and climbing up the sides of mountains

and banging them down;

and everywhere the doves went

there were the hunters

blasting and beaming and blasting,

and one man who didn’t

in the slightest

resemble a dove

was shot in the shoulder;

and there were many complaints

that the doves

were smaller and scarcer

than last year,

but the way they fell

through the air

when you stung the life

out of them

was the same;

and I was there too

but I couldn’t shoot anything

with a paintbrush;

and a couple of them

came over to my canvas

and stood and stood and stood

until I finally said,

for God’s sake

go look at Picasso and Rembrandt,

go look at Klee and Gauguin,

listen to a symphony by Mahler,

and if you get anything

out of that

come back

and stare at my canvas!

what the hell’s wrong with

him? the one guy

said.

he’s nuts. they’re all nuts,

the other guy said. anyhow,

I got my 10 doves.

me too, his buddy said, let’s

go home: we can have them

in the pan

by 2:30.

I taste the ashes of your death

the blossoms shake

sudden water

down my sleeve,

sudden water

cool and clean

as snow—

as the stem-sharp

swords

go in

against your breast

and the sweet wild

rocks

leap over

and

lock us in.

for Jane: with all the love I had, which was not enough:—

I pick up the skirt,

I pick up the sparkling beads

in black,

this thing that moved once

around flesh,

and I call God a liar,

I say anything that moved

like that

or knew

my name

could never die

in the common verity of dying,

and I pick

up her lovely

dress,

all her loveliness gone,

and I speak

to all the gods,

Jewish gods, Christ-gods,

chips of blinking things,

idols, pills, bread,

fathoms, risks,

knowledgeable surrender,

rats in the gravy of 2 gone quite mad

without a chance,

hummingbird knowledge, hummingbird chance,

I lean upon this,

I lean on all of this

and I know:

her dress upon my arm:

but

they will not

give her back to me.

Uruguay or hell

it should have been Mexico

she always liked Mexico

and Arizona and New Mexico

and tacos,

but not the flies

and so there I was

standing there—

durable

visible

clothed

waiting.

the priest was angry:

he had been arguing with the boy

for several days

over his mother’s right to have a

Catholic burial

and they finally settled

that it could not be in

church

but he would say the

thing at the grave.

the priest cared about

technicalities

the son did not care

except about the

bill.

I was the

lover

and I cared but what I cared for

was dead.

there were just 3 of

us: son,

landlady,

lover. it was

hot. the priest waved his words

in the air and

then he was

done. I walked to the

priest and thanked him for the

words.

and we walked

off

we got into the car

we drove away.

it should have been Mexico

or Uruguay or hell.

the son let me out at my

place and said he’d write me about a

stone but I knew he was lying—

that if there was to be a stone

the lover would

put it there.

I went upstairs and turned on the

radio and pulled down the

shades.

notice

the swans drown in bilge water,

take down the signs,

test the poisons,

barricade the cow

from the bull,

the peony from the sun,

take the lavender kisses from my night,

put the symphonies out on the streets

like beggars,

get the nails ready,

flog the backs of the saints,

stun frogs and mice for the cat,

burn the enthralling paintings,

piss on the dawn,

my love

is dead.

for Jane

225 days under grass

and you know more than I.

they have long taken your blood,

you are a dry stick in a basket.

is this how it works?

in this room

the hours of love

still make shadows.

when you left

you took almost

everything.

I kneel in the nights

before tigers

that will not let me be.

what you were

will not happen again.

the tigers have found me

and I do not care.

conversation on a telephone

I could tell by the crouch of the cat,

the way it was flattened,

that it was insane with prey;

and when my car came upon it,

it rose in the twilight

and made off

with bird in mouth,

a very large bird, gray,

the wings down like broken love,

the fangs in,

life still there

but not much,

not very much.

the broken love-bird

the cat walks in my mind

and I cannot make him out:

the phone rings,

I answer a voice,

but I see him again and again,

and the loose wings

the loose gray wings,

and this thing held

in a head that knows no mercy;

it is the world, it is ours;

I put the phone down

and the cat-sides of the room

come in upon me

and I would scream,

but they have places for people

who scream;

and the cat walks

the cat walks forever

in my brain.

ants crawl my drunken arms

O ants crawl my drunken arms

and they let Van Gogh sit in a cornfield

and take Life out of the world with a

shotgun,

ants crawl my drunken arms

and they set Rimbaud

to running guns and looking under rocks

for gold,

O ants crawl my drunken arms,

they put Pound in a nuthouse

and made Crane jump into the sea

in his pajamas,

ants, ants crawl my drunken arms

as our schoolboys scream for Willie Mays

instead of Bach,

ants crawl my drunken arms

through the drink I reach

for surfboards and sinks, for sunflowers

and the typewriter falls like a heart-attack

from the table

or a dead Sunday bull,

and the ants crawl into my mouth

and down my throat,

I wash them down with wine

and pull up the shades

and they are on the screen

and on the streets

climbing church towers

and into tire casings

looking for something else

to eat.

a literary discussion

Markov claims I am trying

to stab his soul

but I’d prefer his wife.

I put my feet on the coffee table

and he says,

I don’t mind you putting

your feet on the coffee table

except that the legs are wobbly

and the thing

will fall apart

any minute.

I leave my feet on the table

but I’d prefer his wife.

I would rather, says Markov,

entertain a ditch-digger

or a newsvendor

because they are kind enough

to observe the decencies

even though

they don’t know

Rimbaud from rat poison.

my empty beercan

rolls to the floor.

that I must die

bothers me less than

a straw, says Markov,

my part of the game

is that I must live

the best I can.

I grab his wife as she walks by,

and then her can is against my belly,

and she has fine knees and breasts

and I kiss her.

it is not so bad, being old, he says,

a calmness sets in, but here’s the catch:

to keep calmness and deadness

separate; never to look upon youth

as inferior because you are old,

never to look upon age as wisdom

because you have experience. a

man can be old and a fool—

many are, a man can be young

and wise—few are. a—

for Christ’s all sake, I wailed,

shut up!

he walked over and got his cane and

walked out.

you’ve hurt his feelings, she said,

he thinks you are a great poet.

he’s too slick for me, I said,

he’s too wise.

I had one of her breasts out.

it was a monstrous

beautiful

thing.

watermelon

and the windows opened that night,

a ceiling dripped the sweat

of a tin god,

and I sat eating a watermelon,

all false red,

water like slow running of rusty

tears,

and I spit out seeds

and swallowed seeds,

and I kept thinking

I am a fool

I am a fool

to eat this watermelon,

but I kept eating

anyhow.

for one I knew

Of all the iron beds in paradise

yours was the most cruel

and I was smoke in your mirror

and you sluiced your hair with jade,

but you were a woman and I was a

boy, but boy enough for an iron bed

and man enough for wine

and you.

now I am a man,

man enough for all,

and you are, you

are

old

not now so cruel,

now your iron bed

is empty.

when Hugo Wolf went mad–

Hugo Wolf went mad while eating an onion

and writing his 253rd song; it was rainy

April and the worms came out of the ground

humming Tannhäuser, and he spilled his milk

with his ink, and his blood fell out to the walls

and he howled and he roared and he screamed, and

downstairs

his landlady said, I knew it, that rotten son

of a

bitch has dummied up his brain, he’s jacked-off

his last piece

of music and now I’ll never get the rent, and someday

he’ll be famous

and they’ll bury him in the rain, but right now

I wish he’d shut

up that god damned screaming—for my money he’s

a silly pansy jackass

and when they move him out of here, I hope they

move in a good solid fisherman

or a hangman

or a seller of

Biblical tracts.

riot

the reason for the riot was we kept getting beans

and a guard grabbed a colored boy who threw his on the floor

and somebody touched a button

and everybody was grabbing everybody;

I clubbed my best friend behind the ear

somebody threw coffee in my face

(what the hell, you couldn’t drink it)

and I got out to the yard

and I heard the guns going

and it seemed like every con had a knife but me,

and all I could do was pray and run

and I didn’t have a god and was fat from playing

poker for pennies with my cellmate,

and the warden’s voice started coming over the cans,

and I heard later, in the confusion,

the cook raped a sailor,

and I lost my shaving cream, a pack of smokes

and a copy of The New Yorker;

also 3 men were shot,

a half dozen knifed,

35 put in the hole,

all yard privileges suspended,

the screws as jittery as L.A. bookies,

the prison radio off,

real quiet,

visitors sent home,

but the next morning

we did get our mail—

a letter from St. Louis:

Dear Charles, I am sorry you are in prison,

but you cannot break the law,

and there was a pressed carnation,

perfume, the looming of outside,

kisses and panties,

laughter and beer,

and that night for dinner

they marched us all back down

to the beans.

meanwhile

neither does this mean

the dead are

at the door

begging bread

before

the stockpiles

blow

like all the

storms and hell

in one big love,

but anyhow

I rented a 6 dollar a week

room

in Chinatown

with a window as large as the

side of the world

filled with night flies and neon,

lighted like Broadway

to frighten away rats,

and I walked into a bar and sat down,

and the Chinaman looked at my rags

and said

no credit

and I pulled out a hundred dollar bill

and asked for a cup of Confucius juice

and 2 China dolls with slits of eyes

just about the size of the rest of them

slid closer

and we sat

and we

waited.

a poem is a city

a poem is a city filled with streets and sewers

filled with saints, heroes, beggars, madmen,

filled with banality and booze,

filled with rain and thunder and periods of

drought, a poem is a city at war,

a poem is a city asking a clock why,

a poem is a city burning,

a poem is a city under guns

its barbershops filled with cynical drunks,

a poem is a city where God rides naked

through the streets like Lady Godiva,

where dogs bark at night, and chase away

the flag; a poem is a city of poets,

most of them quite similar

and envious and bitter…

a poem is this city now,

50 miles from nowhere,

9:09 in the morning,

the taste of liquor and cigarettes,

no police, no lovers, walking the streets,

this poem, this city, closing its doors,

barricaded, almost empty,

mournful without tears, aging without pity,

the hardrock mountains,

the ocean like a lavender flame,

a moon destitute of greatness,

a small music from broken windows…

a poem is a city, a poem is a nation,

a poem is the world…

and now I stick this under glass

for the mad editor’s scrutiny,

and night is elsewhere

and faint gray ladies stand in line,

dog follows dog to estuary,

the trumpets bring on gallows

as small men rant at things

they cannot do.

the cat

the hunter goes by my window

4 feet locked in the bright stillness of a

yellow and blue

night.

cruel strangeness takes hold in wars, in

gardens—

the yellow and blue night explodes before

me, atomic, surgical,

full of starlit

devils…

then the cat leaps up on the

fence, a tubby dismay,

stupid, lonely,

whiskers like an old lady in the

supermarket

and naked as the

moon.

I am temporarily

delighted.

hermit in the city

Idle in the forest of my room

with tungsten trees, owl boiling coffee,

webs cowled in gold over windows

staring outward into hell;

cigarette breath: statues of perfection,

not stuffed or whirled in cancers

of ranting;

engines and wheels crawl to gaseous

ends along the sabre-tooth;

my trees climb with monkey-rhyme,

climb out through the ceiling

breaking TV antennas and

the dull howl of canned laughter,

canned humor, canned death;

idle, idle in this forest,

calla lilies, grass, stone,

all nighttime level peace

of no bombers or faces,

and I dream the stone dream,

the grass dream,

the river running through my

fingerbones

one hundred and fifty years away,

leaving shots of grit and gold

and radium,

lifted and turned

by dizzied fish

and dropped,

raising flecks of sand

in my sleep…

The owl spits his coffee,

my monkeys chit the gibberish plan,

and my walls,

my walls help endure the seizing.

II

I dreamed I drank an Arrow shirt
and stole a broken
pail

all-yellow flowers

through the venetian blinds I saw a fat man in a brown coat

(with a head I can only describe as like a marshmallow)

drag the casket from the hearse: it was battleship gray

with all-yellow flowers.

they put it on a roller that was hidden in purple drape

and the marshmallow-man and one pin-crisp bloodless woman

walked for him up the incline…and!—

gore-bell-horror-sheer-sheen-world-ending-moment!—

almost losing IT there, once—

I could see the body rolling out

like one loose dice in a losing game—the arms waving

windmills and legs kicking autumn footballs.

they made it into the church

and I remained outside

opening my brain to living sunlight.

in the room with me she was singing and rolling her

long golden hair. (this is true Arturo, and that is what

makes it so simple.)

“I just saw them take in a body,”

I fashioned to her.

it’s autumn, it’s trees, it’s telephone wires,

and she sings some song I can’t understand, some High Mass

of Life.

she went on singing but I wanted to die

I wanted yellow flowers like her golden hair

I wanted yellow-singing and the sun.

this is true, and that is what makes it so strange:

I wanted to be opened and untangled, and

tossed away.

what seems to be the trouble, gentlemen?

the service was bad

and the bellboy kept bringing in towels

at the wrong moment.

drunk, I finally clubbed him along

the side of the head.

he was a little man and he fell

like an October leaf,

quite done,

and when the fuzz came up

I had the sofa in front of the door

and the chain on,

the 2nd movement of Brahms’ First Symphony

and had my hand halfway up the ass

of a broad old enough to be my grandmother

and they broke the god damned door,

pushed the sofa aside;

I slapped the screaming chippy

and turned and asked,

what seems to be the trouble, gentlemen?

and some young kid who had never shaved

brought his stick down against my head

and in the morning I was in the prison ward

chained to my bed

and it was hot,

the sweat coming down through the white

senseless sheet,

and they asked all sorts of silly questions

and I knew I’d be late for work,

which worried me immensely.

spring swan

swans die in the Spring too

and there it floated

dead on a Sunday

sideways

circling in 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.

remains

things are good as I am not dead yet

and the rats move in the beercans,

the papersacks shuffle like small dogs,

and her photographs are stuck onto a painting

by a dead German and she too is dead

and it took 14 years to know her

and if they give me another 14

I will know her yet…

her photos stuck over the glass

neither move nor speak,

but I even have her voice on tape,

and she speaks some evenings,

her again

so real she laughs

says the thousand things,

the one thing I always ignored;

this will never leave me:

that I had love

and love died;

a photo and a piece of tape

is not much, I have learned late,

but give me 14 days or 14 years,

I will kill any man

who would touch or take

whatever’s left.

the moment of truth

he died a suicide in a Detroit hotel room

on skid row

and he was stiff when they found him,

rat poison…

I was managing the place then,

trying to collect rents and

emptying the trash,

and I stood there and watched them put the needle in him,

his eyes were wide open and one of them slid his eyes

shut, and then the needle began to take hold,

he had died stiff upright in the chair

and he began to loosen up

and they found a couple of letters from his sister

in another city, threw him on the stretcher and took him

down the stairs. the sheets were still kinda clean

so I just made the bed over again, cleaned out the dresser,

and when I walked out, all the winos were in the hall

in their pants and dirty undershirts, needing shaves and something to

drink, and I told them: “all right, all you monkeys

clear the god damned halls! you hurt my eyesight!”

“a man died, sir. he was our friend,” one of them said.

it was Benny the Dip. “all right, Benny,” I told him,

“you’ve got one night left in here to get up the rent!”

you should have seen the rest of them disappear:

death doesn’t matter a damn when you need a place to sleep.

on the fire suicides of the buddhists

“They only burn themselves to reach Paradise.”

—Mme. Nhu

original courage is good,

motivation be damned,

and if you say they are trained

to feel no pain,

are they

guaranteed this?

is it still not possible

to die for somebody else?

you sophisticates

who lay back and

make statements of explanation,

I have seen the red rose burning

and this means more.

a division

I live in an old house where nothing

screams victory

reads history

where nothing

plants flowers

sometimes my clock falls

sometimes my sun is like a tank on fire

I do not ask

your armies

or

your kisses

or

your death

I have my

own

my hands have arms

my arms have shoulders

my shoulders have me

I have me

you have me when you can see me

but I don’t like you

to see me

I do not like you to see that

I have eyes in my head

and can walk

and

I do not want to

answer your questions

I do not want to

amuse you

I do not want you to

amuse me

or sicken me

or talk about

anything

I do not want to

love you

I do not want to

save you

I do not want your arms

I do not want your

shoulders

I have me

you have you

let that

be.

conversation with a lady sipping a straight shot

and Joe he was not much good

even at half past 40, he insensibly

loved whore and horse like the average man,

his age would love what brought up color

out of the stem of a dahlia, but so it goes,

the gods break us in half with more than

lightning, twice married twice divorced,

who can ask for more than bloodshot eyes

and bumblebeebelly, good men are broken

daily in the Korea of useless sunlight;

quitting jobs, getting fired more than rockets,

knowing nothing, absolutely nothing

except maybe the way he wanted his haircut,

bouncing like a 16-year-old kid out of a

bad dream, always late for work

but never late for the first race

or the end stool down at the HAPPY NIGHT.

the saying is, Joe never grew up

but in another way he never grew down either,

trying to puff life into himself through his

cheap cigar and flat jukebox music,

or fat June who didn’t care either,

telling her over and over,

Baby, wait’ll you see what I’ve got!

as if the whole thing were something new

and fat June staring into her all-important beer

shaking it and enjoying it

as she would never enjoy herself again.

and when Joe went, a child went,

but they remember him: the whores, the bartenders,

the bosses, the state unemployment offices,

and the jocks—

the way he used to stand down by the rail

and say as they paraded past:

“Hi, Willie! How’s your mother today?”

or, “Eddie, you oughta get one made of wood,

the way you’re riding lately.”

Joe I saw on that last night and he threw his

glass into the mirror and the bartender

mad as hell chased him with a baseball bat

swinging at his balls and everything else,

driving him out into the street and into the path

of a bull with one horn that didn’t sound,

a new Cad a lot tougher than Joe and a lot more

valuable, and that’s the way the scales balance:

broken mirror, broken Joe.

and when I went in the next night the mirror was

still broken and Helen, fat Helen, was shaking her beer,

and I bought her a shot and I said, “Baby, I’ve got

something to show you, something like you’ve never

seen before.”

and she smiled, but it wasn’t what she was thinking.

the way it will happen inside a can of peaches

to die with your boots on

while writing poetry

is not as glorious

as riding a horse

down Broadway

with a stick of dynamite

in your teeth,

but neither is

adding the sum total

of all the planets

named or visible

to man,

and the horse was a gray,

the man’s name was

Sanchez or Kandinsky,

it was 79 degrees

and the children kept

yelling,

hog hog

we are tired

blow us to hell.

scene in a tent outside the cotton fields of Bakersfield:

we fought for 17 days inside that tent

thrusting and counter-thrusting

but finally she got away

and I walked outside

and spit

in the dirty sand.

Abdullah, I said, why don’t you

wash your shorts? you’ve been

wearing the same

shorts

for 17 years.

Effendi, he said, it’s the sun,

the sun cleans everything, what

went with the girl?

I don’t know if I couldn’t

please her

or if I couldn’t

catch her. she was

pretty young.

what did she cost, Effendi?

17 camel.

he whistled through his broken

teeth. aren’t you going

to catch her?

howinthehell how? can I get

my camels back?

you are an American, he said.

I walked into the tent

fell upon the ground

and held my head

within

my hands.

suddenly she burst within

the tent

laughing madly,

Americano,

Americano!

please

go away

I said quietly.

men are, she said sitting down and rolling down

her stockings, some parts titty and some parts

tiger. you don’t mind

if I roll down

my stockings?

I don’t mind, I said,

if you roll down the top

of your dress. whores are

always rolling down

their hose. please

go away. I read where

the cruiser crew passed the helmet

for the red cross; I think I’ll

have them pass it

to brace your flabby

butt.

have ’em pass the helmet twice, dad,

she said, howcum you don’t love me

no more?

I been thinking, I said,

how can Love have a urinary tract

and distended bowels?

pack up, daughter, and flow,

maneuver out of the mansions

of my sight!

you forget, daddy-o, we’re in

my tent!

oh, christ, I said, the trivialities

of private ownership! where’s my

hat?

you were wearing a towel, dad, but

kiss me, daddy, hold me in your arms!

I walked over and mauled her breasts.

I drink too much beer, she said,

I can’t help it if I

piss.

we fucked for 17 days.

night animal

I have never seen such an animal

except perhaps once,

but that is another story—

there it stood,

no lion

yet no dog

no deer yet deer

frozen nose

and eye, all eye gathering all the

moonlight that hung in trees;

and everywhere the people slept;

I saw bombers over Brazil,

cathedrals choked in silk,

the gray dice of Vegas,

a Van Gogh over the kitchen sink.

home, I poured a drink

took off my gloves you god damned thing

why could you have not been a woman

with all your beauty,

with all your beauty

I have not found her yet.

on the train to Del Mar

I get on the train on the way to the track

it’s down near Dago

and this gives some space and rolling and

I have my pint

and I walk to the barcar for a couple of

beers

and I weave upon the floor—

THACK THACK THACKA THACK THACK THACKA THACK—

and some of it comes back

a little of it comes back

like some green in a leaf after a long

dryness

and the sun crashes into the barcar like a

bull and the bartender sees that

I am feeling good

he smiles a real smile and

asks—

“How’s it going?”

how’s it going? my heels are down

my shoes cracked

I am wearing my father’s pants and he died

10 years ago

I need 8 teeth pulled

my intestine has a partial blockage

I puff on a dime cigar

“Great!” I answer him,

“how you making?”

glory glory glory and the train rolls on

past the sea

past the sand and

down in between the

cliffs.

I thought of ships, of armies, hanging on…

I have practiced death for so long

and still I have not learned it,

and tonight I came in

and my goldfish was not in his bowl,

he had leaped

for reasons of his own

(I had changed the water; it might have been

a fly…)

and he was now on the rug

with black spots upon his golden body,

and he was still and he was stiff

but I put him back in the water

(some sound told me to do this)

and I seemed to see the gills move,

a large air bubble formed

but the body was still stiff

but miraculously

it did not float flat—

the tail part was down in the water,

and I thought of ships, of armies,

hanging on,

and then I saw the small fins

near the underside of the head

move

and I sat down on the couch

and tried to read,

tried not to think

that the woman who had given me these fish

was now dead 6 months,

the world going on past living things

now no longer living,

and the other fish had died.

he had overeaten, he had eaten his meal

and most of the meal of the small one,

and now the woman was gone

and the small one was stiff,

and an hour later

when I got up

he floated flat and finished;

his eyes looking up at me did not look at me

but into places I could not see,

and the slave carried the master,

this goldfish with black spots

and dumped him into the toilet

and flushed him away.

I put the bowl in the corner

and thought, I really cannot stand

much more of this.

dead fish, dead ladies, dead wars.

it does seem a miracle to see anybody alive

and now somebody on the radio is playing

a guitar very slowly and I think, yes,

he too: his fingers, his hands, his mind,

and his music goes on but it is very still

it is very quiet, and I am tired.

war and piece

all the efforts of the Spanish to effect peace

were in vain and Domenico came over the hill

and shot the white chicken and raped the woman

in the hut, and then he rode up the road

noticing the pink anemones, the lazy toads,

and when he got to town he ate a hot tamale,

and through the window he saw the fleet

and the fleet put its guns even with the town,

he saw that, and in came a wind of fire,

and in the smoke he grabbed the cigarette girl

and raped her, then he got back on his mule

which stepped carefully over the dead

and he rode back to the village where his own hut

still stood, and the old lady was outside

rubbing clothes on rocks by the stream,

and in the air came the planes

looking them over

banking their wings

and finally deciding

that they were not worth the bombs,

they left

like large undecided butterflies,

and Domenico went inside and fell

upon the floor

and the old lady came in

wiggling what was left,

and he said, war is a horrible thing,

and he wondered if anybody would ever bother to rape her,

he would not stop them, they

could have it, not much there, nothing,

and he decided that sleep was better than nothing

and he went to sleep.

18 cars full of men thinking of what could have been

driving in from the track

I saw a woman in green

all rump and breast and dizziness running

across the street.

she was as sexy as a

green and drunken antelope and

when she got to the curbing she

tripped and fell

down and

sat in the gutter and

I sat there in my car

looking at her and

oddly

I felt most impassive as if

nothing had happened and

I sat there looking at this

green creature until

a moving van 60 feet long came

to a stop and

helped the

lady

up.

a young man in white overalls

flushed red and the girl was built

all around all around and

stupid with falling and stupid with life and

swaying on the tower stilts of her

heels

she stood there rubbing her

white knees and

the young man kept talking to

her

he was big dumb blond pink and lonely

but then

the woman asked him

where the nearest bar was and

he grinned and pointed down the street and

gave it

up

he got back into the truck and

60 feet full of

furniture and blanket and stove

pulled on down the street

and the green antelope

crossed the street

toward the bar

wobbling and shaking

shaking and wobbling

everything and

we sat transfixed and

watching

until

in the backed-up traffic

behind me

a man of strength

honked

and I put the thing in drive

slowing for the big dip

by the market

that could tear your car in

half

and they all followed me

slowing for the dip

too:

18 cars full of men thinking of

what could have been—

about the one who

got away and

it was about sunset and

heavy traffic and heavy

life.

the screw-game

one of the terrible things is

really

being in bed

night after night

with a woman you no longer

want to screw.

they get old, they don’t look very good

anymore—they even tend to

snore, lose

spirit.

so, in bed, you turn sometimes,

your foot touches hers—

god, awful!—

and the night is out there

beyond the curtains

sealing you together

in the

tomb.

and in the morning you go to the

bathroom, pass in the hall, talk,

say odd things; eggs fry, motors

start.

but sitting across

you have 2 strangers

jamming toast into mouths

burning the sullen head and gut with

coffee.

in 10 million places in America

it is the same—

stale lives propped against each

other

and no place to

go.

you get in the car

and you drive to work

and there are more strangers there, most of them

wives and husbands of somebody

else, and besides the guillotine of work, they

flirt and joke and pinch, sometimes tend to

work off a quick screw somewhere—

they can’t do it at home—

and then

the drive back home

waiting for Christmas or Labor Day or

Sunday or

something.

a night of Mozart

They slit his pockets and shot him in his car,

eighteen hundred dollars split four ways,

and I used to see him at the track

watching the tote

and going the last-flick bullrush toward the window;

he never took a drink

and he never took a woman home with him,

and he never spoke to anyone,

and I never spoke to anyone either

except to order a drink

or if a hustler had good legs and ass

to let her know

over a scotch and water

that later would be o.k.;

what I am getting at is

that this guy was a pro,

it was a business with him,

he didn’t come out to holler and get drunk

and get fucked—

he came out to make it, which is better

than punching another man’s timeclock;

when I saw him bullrushing the $50 window

late in the year

I knew he was making it much better than I;

the board had showed a lot of false flashes,

some nut with a roll was dropping in one or two grand

at the last minute, but this guy was just that,

a nut with money, and we finally had to go through

the routine of finding out what he was betting

and flushing the horse out

before we got our bets down; this made one sweaty

late bullrush…anyhow, the quiet one didn’t

worry about this and always laid his bet a little ahead

of time and walked off; he kept getting better,

his clothes looked better, he looked calmer,

and you could see him off to the side,

after most races, shoving bills into his wallet,

and Jeanette, one of the better hustlers, said,

“I’d start him off with a blow-job and then twist

his nuts until he told me how he did it…”

“Would you do that to me, baby?” I asked.

“With your method of play you’re lucky to have

admission,” she said downing a drink that had cost me

85¢. “Do you still have a collection of Mozart?”

I asked her. “What’s that got to do with it?” she asked.

I walked off.

I read about it in the papers next day. Witnesses

said there were 3 of them and a woman at the wheel.

I saw Jeanette at the bar. “Hello, Mozart,” she said.

She looked a little nervous and at the same time she

seemed to feel pretty good. “I’ll take a double

shot right now,” I said. “And after the next race,

I think I’ll have a vodka. I’m going to mix them all day.

Haven’t

been real drunk in a couple of years.”

She watched me lighting a cigarette, then I told her, “Also, I

want a pack of smokes, and you are going home with me tonight and

we are going to listen to Mozart all night. You are going to

like it. You are going to have to like it.”

She paid for the drink. “You’re looking for trouble,” she told

me. “Bitch,” I said, “I have been trying to commit suicide for

years.”

I had a good day. We went home and listened to Mozart for hours.

She was as good as ever on the springs. Only this time there was

no charge. Then she cried half the night and said she loved me.

I knew what that was for.

The next afternoon at the track I didn’t speak to her, and I won

one hundred and twelve dollars, not counting drinks and admission,

and I kept looking back through the rearview window as I drove,

bigtime, and then I began to laugh, shit, they knew I was nothing,

I was safe; I should tell the screws but when a man is dead

the screws can’t bring him back.

I got home and opened a fifth of scotch, tired of Mozart

I tried The Rake’s Progress by Strav.

I read the Racing Form for about 30 minutes, put in a long distance

call to some woman in Sacramento, drank a little more and went to

bed, alone, about 11:30.

sleeping woman

I sit up in bed at night and listen to you

snore

I met you in a bus station

and now I wonder at your back

sick white and stained with

children’s freckles

as the lamp divests the unsolvable

sorrow of the world

upon your sleep.

I cannot see your feet

but I must guess that they are

most charming feet.

who do you belong to?

are you real?

I think of flowers, animals, birds

they all seem more than good

and so clearly

real.

yet you cannot help being a

woman. we are each selected to be

something. the spider, the cook.

the elephant. it is as if we were each

a painting and hung on some

gallery wall.

—and now the painting turns

upon its back, and over a curving elbow

I can see ½ a mouth, one eye and

almost a nose.

the rest of you is hidden

out of sight

but I know that you are a

contemporary, a modern living

work

perhaps not immortal

but we have

loved.

please continue to

snore.

when you wait for the dawn to crawl through the screen like a burglar to take your life away—

the snake had crawled the hole,

and she said,

tell me about

yourself.

and

I said,

I was beaten down

long ago

in some alley

in another

world.

and she said,

we’re all

like pigs

slapped down some lane,

our

grassbrains

singing

toward the

blade.

by

god,

you’re an

odd one,

I said.

we

sat there

smoking

cigarettes

at

5

in the morning.

poem while looking at an encyclopedia:

it is a page of reptiles, green pink fuchsia

slime motif

sexual organs

lips teeth fangs

in the grass of my brain

bringing down 1917 Spads,

games with toy cars

in a boy’s backyard;

and eggs eggs eggs

of the hognose snake

she circles them in the sun,

life is an electric whip,

and ha!—the copperhead

he looks about, tiny brain

in the air searching

a wiseness as small as

seething to stroke a death;

and the horned toad:

fat little shitter in

fake armour

he blinks blinks

blinks in the sun

watching the flies

he is a tired old man

beyond hardly caring—

he just looks and waits

very dry

(wanting storm)

powerless

(without desire for)

ungifted he

waits to be eaten;

and the gila monster

and the collared lizard,

the box turtle,

the chuckwalla,

here they go along the page,

and through rock and cacti

I suppose they are beautiful

in their slow horror,

and at the bottom

an alligator puts his eye upon me

and we look

he and I; he breathes and hungers

on a flat dream, and so

this is the way we will be spread

across the page,—

teeth, title, poesy,

alligator heart,

as the sky falls down.

3 lovers

I saw them

sitting in the lamplight and

I went in

and

he talked

waving his hands

jesus

his face was red

and

he talked

he wanted to be

right

he waved his hands

but when I left

he just sat there

and

she sat there

in the chair across from him

and

I got into my car

and backed out the drive

and

left them there

to do

whatever

they wanted to

do.

did I ever tell you?

Did I ever tell you

about the damn fool who

liked to make love

in front of a

picture window?

And there was the one

who took the phonograph back,

and the one who

broke the lampshades

and the one with the

little golden hairs on his

chest.

And the one

on the kitchen floor,

and the one who

hunted for the mouth

of the Orinoco River.

And the tall one who

became a forest ranger

and left a note with Roger

confessing he was queer

(but Roger already knew).

Then there’s the communist—he’s in

Canada

or Florida, only I think

he’s somebody else under this other

name, and I have a photo of him

crawling out of a rowboat;

he has lovely gray hair and his face

is sort of blue

and he writes these

long love letters.

And Edward was a queer—but so very gentle;

he lit candles, had a sense of humor and

very hairy legs—like one of those land

crabs

or a coconut.

And Jerry was just like a horse—

if I looked him in the eye

he couldn’t

kiss me.

(He just pretended he was gay

but he wasn’t.)

(I can tell. Oh, I can always tell.)

Then there was my desert

romance—I really don’t like to tell

about it, but since you asked—

I think he really

loved me.

I got drunk and

fell off my horse

and broke my

arm

when we tried to jump a fence

riding double-saddle

and his wife threatened to

kill me

so

I

left town.

I used to go up on the

roof with Manny.

He was strange.

Parents spoiled him.

We looked at the moon through

a telescope: I stood

at the big end

and held it up

and he sat down

at the little end

and looked through it.

And Carl has my Drama

Through the Ages, from

Euripides to Miller.

(I must write him for it. You

won’t mind?) That Carl—

it was my birthday

and I came in

and he was out

cold drunk

on the sofa

and I threw

some flowers at him

(vase and all)

and he stood up

and showed me the tiniest

gold bracelet

in a little felt box,

and I cried.

(Oh yes, I loved him. I really

loved him—he was so kind,

and he was always writing mother—

“Where’s Rita at, please tell me!”

but mother

never told him.)

Then there was that old bastard German

they never know when to give it up.

He was bald and I hated him,

he looked like a sick frog

and his breath was bad,

but the funniest thing

was all this hair on

his belly. I could never

figure it.

He had plenty of money

but he was married,

the old bastard,

and he told me

he loved me,

and he hired me as a

secretary,

he was always playing around,

the old bastard,

and I finally ran away,

though I could have taken him

from his wife

but I couldn’t stand the old

bastard.

Vincent?

No. He was nothing. He was frightened

of his brother.

“My brother!” he’d scream

and we’d all run out the back door

and into the garage naked

or just in panties and bras.

I made curtains for his house

and he called me daughter

and I cooked for him

and he wrote everything in a little

black book and wore a sailing cap.

He dropped money on the floor

and played the organ…

wrote an opera for Organ

called the Emperor of San Francisco.

But I liked him mainly because

he knew the kids,

drove me to Newman once to meet them,

and once, before he got real tight

he sent me money

when I was stranded in the islands.

And Gus—he was just like a father to me—

I knew him so long.

I met him in the islands

when I was stranded.

I think he saved my life.

I got fired for being caught in the

barracks.

But he understood.

Oh, I know you don’t like him,

but he’s so understanding.

And when Vincent sent the money

we both came stateside.

He said he wanted to marry me

but he had to take care of his

mother

who had some kind of

lifelong disease.

He’s always running back to

those islands,

so completely lost,

utterly lost.

You’d hardly know him now.

He’s stopped drinking

and weighs 297,

(and he kissed just like you,

and had little wires in his left

leg, but he’d never tell me…)

…and the chauffeur

walked into the room

with a basket

with a live chicken

in it. This guy grabbed the chicken

around the neck

and whirled it

around and around

and you should have heard

that chicken scream

and then he cut it with a knife

and the blood

flew like rain

and this guy

played his piccolo

and watched my eyes,

and that’s all that happened,

even though he had made me

take off my dress.

He gave me $25

but somehow

the whole thing

made me sick.

Nicholas was a queer

and impotent,

and he was my lover.

He still has my

e.e. cummings.

The first one was insane.

He blew

through fig leaves

while sitting on the coffee table

his hands tangled in my hair.

He played the oboe

and you know what

they say about the oboe:

they took him away

from me

and he was like a child.

I gave the oboe to a ballet dancer

who broke his

leg on

a camp stool

while

hiking

in the Adirondacks.

I was engaged to Arlington

only three weeks.

And he tore the ring from my finger

claiming he didn’t

want to marry the whole

queer army.

Later he cried on my shoulder

and told me he was a queen bee

and a general

and that he had been kidding himself

all his life.

I cried when he left.

Ralph was the only one, I think,

who ever loved me,

but he didn’t appreciate the finer

things:

he thought that Van Gogh used to pitch for

Brooklyn and that George Sand played

opposite Zsa Zsa Gabor.

And when he sent money from East Lansing

I bought a hi-fi set and a toy bull

with blue eyes

and called him Keithy-pot.

I sent Ralph a pressed azalea and a photo

of me

bending over

in a bikini.

Sherman was afraid of the dark.

He died swallowing a

cherry seed. Roger—I’ve told

you

about him; Roger started

a good story once

but he never finished it.

It was about a queer

sitting at a table

at a night club

and these people came up—

but, oh, I can’t explain it.

Peter will kill himself some day.

Art will kill himself.

Tommy set fire to the bed and

beat his mother. I only

lived with him

because of her. We went

to Alkaseltzer Mass

together. Once he

hit her when she

got off the streetcar.

Then he hit me. I hated him,

but she was like a mother to me.

And then I met you.

Remember that Sunday at

the Round Duck?

You said,

let’s go to

Mexico.

And you took me up

to your place

and read Erie Stanley Gardner

and then you hung out

the window.

You looked like my father.

You should have known my father.

He was a drunkard.

Oh, I’m so glad I met you.

You make me

feel so

good. Darling you are a

man.

The only real

MAN

I’ve ever known!

Oh dear, how I’ve

waited!

My hands are cold and

you have the funniest

feet!

I love you…

song of my typewriter:

the best way to think is not at all—

my banjo screams in the brush

like a trapped rabbit (do rabbits

scream? never mind: this is an

alcoholic dream);

machine guns, I say,

the altarboys,

the wet nurses,

the fat newsboys,

rubber-lipped delegates

of the precious life;

my banjo screams

sing

sing through the darkened dream,

green grow green,

take gut:

death, at last,

is no headache.

and the moon and the stars and the world:

long walks at

night—

that’s what’s good

for the

soul:

peeking into windows

watching tired

housewives

trying to fight

off

their beer-maddened

husbands.

the sharks

the sharks knock on my door

and enter and ask favors;

how they puff in my chairs

looking about the room,

and they ask for deeds:

light, air, money,

anything they can get—

beer, cigarettes, half dollars, dollars,

fives, dimes,

all this as if my survival were assured,

as if my time were nothing

and their presence valuable.

well, we all have our sharks, I’m sure,

and there’s only one way to get them off

before they hack and nibble you to death—

stop feeding them; they will find

other bait; you fattened them

the last dozen times around—

now set them out

to sea.

fag, fag, fag

he wrote,

you are a humorless ass,

I was only pulling your leg about D.

joining the Foreign Legion, and

D. is about as much fag as

Winston Churchill.

hmm, I thought, I am in contact with the

greatest minds of my

generation. clever! Winnie is dead so he

can’t be a

fag.

the letter continued,

you guys in California are fag-happy,

all you do is sit around and think about

fags. just the same I will send you the anti-war

materials I and others wrote, although I

doubt it will stop the

war.

10 years ago he had sent me a photo of

D. and himself at a picnic ground.

D. was dressed in a Foreign Legion uniform,

there was a bottle of wine,

and a table with one tableleg

crooked.

I thought it over for 10 years and then

answered:

I have nothing against 2 men sleeping together

so long as I am not one of those 2

men.

I didn’t infer which one was the

fag.

anyway, today I got the anti-war materials

in the mail, but he’s right:

it won’t stop the war or anything

else.

Ivan the Terrible

found it difficult

either to stand or

to bend over

was fat with

big eyes and

low

forehead

had a perennial

smile

due to an

underslung

jaw

killed his eldest son

with blows

in a moment

of anger

appeared to be uncomfortable

after the age

of

40

excelled in progress

and

butchery

died in 1584

at the age of

54, weighing

209

pounds

last summer

they removed his

skeleton

from the Arkhangelsk Church

in the Kremlin

to make a

lifelike

bust

now

he’s almost done

and looks like

a 20th century

bus driver

the bones of my uncle

(for J.B. who never read the stuff)

the bones of my uncle

rode a motorcycle in Arcadia

and raped a housewife

within a garage

hung with rakes and hoses

the bones of my Uncle

left behind

1: a jar of peanut butter

and

2: two girls named

Katherine &

Betsy and

3: a ragged wife who cried

continually.

the bones of my Uncle

played horses

too

and

made counterfeit money—

mostly dimes, and the F.B.I. wanted him for

something more serious

although what it was

I have since

forgotten.

the bones of my Uncle

stretched the long way

seemed too short

and looked at

coming toward you

bent like bows

beneath the knees.

the bones of my Uncle

smoked and cussed

and they were buried

where bones are buried

who have no

money.

I almost forgot to tell you:

his bones were named “John”

and

had green eyes

which did not

last.

a last shot on two good horses

it was about 10 years ago at Hollywood Park—

I had a shackjob, 2 cars, a house, a dog as big as Nero drunk,

and I was making it with the horses, or I thought I was,

but going into the 7th race I was down to my last $50

and I put the $50 on Determine and then I wanted a cup of coffee

but I only had a dime left and coffee was then 15¢.

I went into the crapper and I wanted to flush myself away,

they had me, all I had left was that piece of paper in my wallet,

and I would have been willing to sell that back for $40

but I was ashamed. well, I went out and watched the race

and Determine won.

I collected and set aside a ten and put the remainder all on

My Boy Bobby. My Boy Bobby made it. I collected and stood over in

a corner, separating the 50s and the 20s and tens and fives,

and then I drove on in, I gave her the thumb up as I drove up the drive,

and when I got inside I threw all the money up into the air.

She was a beautiful whore and her eyes almost came out when she saw

that, and the dog ran in and snatched a ten and ran into the kitchen,

and I was pouring drinks and she said, “hey, the hound got a tenner!”

and I said, “hell, let him have it!” we drank ’em down.

then I said, “umm, I think I’ll get that ten anyhow,” and I walked in

and took it from him, it was only chewed a little, and that night

on the bed she showed me all the tricks in wonderland, and later

it rained and we listened to Carmen and drank and laughed all night long.

days and nights like that just don’t happen too often.

III

& the great white horses come up
& lick the frost of the dream

no grounding in the classics

I haven’t slept

for 3 nights

or 3 days

and my eyes are more

red than white;

I laugh in the

mirror,

and I have been

listening to the clock

tick

and the gas

of my heater

smells

a hot thick

heavy

smell, run

through with the sounds

of cars,

cars strung up

like ornaments

in my head, but

I have read

the classics

and on my couch

sleeps a wine-soaked

whore

who for the first

time

has heard

Beethoven’s 9th,

and bored,

has fallen asleep,

politely

listening.

just think, daddy, she said,

with your brains

you might be the first man

to copulate

on the moon.

drawing of a band concert on a matchbox

life on paper is so much more

pleasurable:

there are no bombs or flies or

landlords or starving

cats,

and I am in the kitchen

staring down at the blue lake of the

concertmaster

and also the trees

rowboats, boy with American flag

lady in yellow with fan

Civil War veteran

girl with balloon

spotted dog

sailboat,

the peace of an ancient day

with the sun dreaming old

battles—

John L. Sullivan emptying the pint

in his dressing room

and getting ready to whip the world like a

bad child—

far from our modern life

where a doctor sticks something in your side,

saying, “is something making you nervous? something is

killing you.”

I open the matchbox, take out a beautiful wooden match

and light a cigar.

I look out the window. it is raining, there will be nothing

in the park today except bums and madmen.

I blow the smoke against the wet glass and wonder what I am doing

inside here

dry and dying and

I hear the rain as a toilet flushes through the wall

(a living neighbor)

and the flowers open their arms for love.

I sit down next to the lady in yellow with the fan and

she smiles at me

and we talk we talk

only I can’t hear for all the music

“your name? your name?” I keep asking

but she only smiles at me

and the dog is howling.

but yellow is my favorite color

(Van Gogh liked it too)

yellow

and I do not blow smoke in her face

and I am there

I am actually down there in the matchbox

and I am here too.

she smiles

and I lay her right on the

stove

and it is

hot

hot

the American flag waves in

battle—

play your music concertmaster

in your red coat

with your hot July buttocks.

the balloon pops and I walk across a kitchen

on a rainy day in February

to check on eggs and bread and

wine and sanity

to check on glue

to paste nice pictures

on these walls.

bad night

I am fairly drunk and there is a man jumping

up and down on the floor in his shack next door

he’s rough on the floorboards and I listen to his

dance while my wife is in the can and Fidelio is on

our radio, and today at the track I lost $70 and a woman

got her foot caught in the escalator, and the drunks

hollered at the usher: REVERSE IT! THROW IT IN

REVERSE! meanwhile, the red blood and the gamblers

and

myself watching the tote for a meaningful flash and I

dumped it in

the wrong place.

now the man has stopped jumping on the floor and

has opened his bible. well, it has been a bad

summer for all of us. a particular feeling

a flailing feeling of too much. we are shocked

almost senseless with the demand to put on our

socks, we hang like paintings of blue-skinned

virgins before young boys in dementia, & it’s

too much hair on the neck and flowers dying in a

bowl. my wife comes out of the

can.

are you all right? she

asks. yeah, I

say.

down by the wings

they speak of angels or she

speaks of angels

from a plateglass window overlooking the

Sunset Strip

(she has these visions)

(I don’t have these visions)

but maybe angels prefer people with

money

daughters of rich farmers who are dying of

throat cancer in Brazil.

myself—I keep seeing these

wingless creatures of mean story and dismal

intent

and she says

when I defame her

dream:

you are trying to

pull me down

by the wings.

she’s going to Europe in the summer—

Greece, Italy, most probably

Paris and she’s

taking some of her angels with

her.

not all

but some.

now there’s this half-Chinese boy who used to

sleep on fire escapes

the Negro homosexual who plays chess and

recited Shelley at the Sensualist

then there’s the one who has real talent with the

brush (Nickey) but who simply can’t get

started

somehow and

there’s also Sieberling who cries because he

loves his mother (actually).

many of these

angels

will leave town and

flow around the

Arch of Triumph

to be photographed or

to chase beetles at

9 rue Git-le-Coeur, and

it’s going to be a hot and

lonesome summer

for many of us when

the devil walks in and retakes Hollywood

once more.

fire

schoolgirls in tight skirts and first heels

came

sparrows flew away and fat landlords parted from their

electric mirrors

skinny housewives with runny noses and dirty aprons

came

and the fire engine: polished wailing disorder spilling

intestines of water

came

firemen in helmets

firemen with axes

came

god, a tree 90 feet high

BURNING

A HOUSE BURNING RED

tolling

lordward

the grass melting and yelling on the top of the

ground and

those smokesweet pictures of bluegray putting the

whole sky out of

place

and all the while nobody saying anything just

watching

what the flames did

like something busted out

finally and having its

say

we all came

together.

one for the old man

standing in the plaza I can hear speeches about a new

world—

men asking for their kind of love

while mine is a kind of pinch-eyed drag of

going on, for that which seems so important to them

seems worthless to me.

so

I go back to the hotel room

and look at the pitcher of water on the dresser

and the bits of glass hung on string

left in the window by a Mexican whore

to reflect what’s left of me

and this seems

sensible

as sensible as reading the history of the

Crimean War

as sensible as wax and women and

dogs.

I watch a fly and read the newspaper

then eat sausage and bananas

and an orange.

then I pull the shade on the speechmakers.

over the back of a chair are my

belt and necktie,

necktie knotted

for my throat

which is like a flower 80 feet high and

pumping out phrases of

bedlam.

mutilated forever at the age of

46. our dear sweet father said we’d come to

this.

a drawer of fish

he kept drawing fish

on sheets of paper

and I said,

Jack, what’s wrong?

but he wouldn’t answer

and his wife said

he won’t look for a job

that’s what’s wrong,

and I gotta stay with

the kids; I don’t know

how in the hell we’re

going to make it.

he kept drawing fish

on sheets of paper

and he wasn’t even drunk.

I went down and got 2

bottles of wine

and the old lady poured

them around.

and Jack drank his,

then cursed: this g.d.

ballpoint pen always runs

out of blood

just when I’m at the point,

the crux, just when I’m

finally burning

in the imbecile wax of fire…

he threw the pen

into a papersack full of empty bottles,

empty sardine and

bean cans, put on his coat

and walked out.

where’s he going?

I asked.

I don’t give a damn

where’s he’s going,

his old lady said.

then she pulled her dress back

and showed me a lot of leg;

it looked pretty good, I

have always been a leg man

but I walked over to the closet

and put on my coat.

where you going? she asked.

I’m going to look for a job,

I told her,

there’s an ad in the Times,

they need janitors for the

new Fleischman building.

I walked down the steps

and half a block North

to the nearest bar.

Jack was sitting there.

I don’t know, he said,

I think I’m going

to kill myself.

it doesn’t matter, I said,

it’s going to happen

anyhow.

we sat there the rest of the afternoon

drinking

and about 7 p.m. we left,

he with one with fire in her hair

and I with one with a limp

a reader of Henry James

who laughed out of the side

of her mouth.

it was 63 degrees

and not much left

of the world.

L. Beethoven, half-back

he came out for the team;

Ludwig V. Beethoven, blocking

half-back. he really knocked

them down. but he drank beer

and played the piano all night.

Schiller, you’re a freak, he

said. leave the ladies alone.

the ladies will always be the

same. don’t fret, when you

need one, she’ll be there.

and Tchaikovsky, he said,

take some vitamins. I don’t

mind that you’re a homo:

just stay away

from me. that’s the trouble

with all you guys:

you’re too

pale!

I took a lateral from G. B. Shaw

and ducked around the end;

Beethoven blocked out 3 men,

and as I went past

he said, I got a couple of

babes lined up for tonight;

don’t injure

anything

you might need

later…

I shot up the field

evading tacklers

like a madman. B. was

studying harmony, but

I doubted if he could

ever

make it. he was just

a fat

beer-drinking

German.

self-destruction

my snake’s red fingers

he said

and they took him off the couch

and put him on the stretcher

and carried him down

25 steps

and his woman crossed her legs

(I could almost see her beautiful crotch)

and lit a cigarette

and said

I just

can’t kaant see what possessed him,

and I slapped her across the face

flying the cigarette to the rug

like some Mars thing

and followed the stretcher

on down.

these mad windows that taste life and cut me if I go through them

I’ve always lived on second and third floors or higher

all my life

but I got some woman pregnant

and since she wasn’t my wife

we moved over here—

we were in the back at first

2nd floor rear

as Mr. and Mrs.—

a new start—

and there was a madwoman in this

place and she kept the shades drawn

and hollered obscenities in the dark

(I thought she was pretty sharp)

but they took her away one day

and we moved in here and had the baby,

a beautiful skunk of a child with pale blue eyes

who made me swallow my heart like a cherry in a chilled drink,

but the woman decided I was insane too

and moved the child and herself to Hollywood

and I give them what money I can—

but most of the time I lay around all day

sweating in bed

wondering how much longer I can fool them

listening to my landlord outside

watering his lawn

46 years hanging on my bones

and big green tears cascade ha, ha,

down my face and are tabulated by my dirty pillow:

all those years shot through the head

assassinated forever

drunk senseless

hobbled and slugged in factories

poked with bad dreams

dripping away in mouse- and ghost-infested rooms

across an America without meaning,

boy o boy.

about 3 p.m. I get up

having failed to sleep but more than a few minutes

anyhow

and then I put on an old undershirt

crisp fresh torn shorts

and a pair of stolen army pants

and I pull up the shades

and sit a little back in a hard folding chair

near a window on the streetside

and then they come by,

young girls

fresh fluid divine intelligent

drinks of orange juice

rides in air-conditioned elevators,

in blue and green and yellow in motion

in red in waves

in squads and battalions of laughter

they laugh at me and for me,

old 46, at attention, pig green eyes

like a Van Gogh bursting and breaking

the trachea and tits of the earth and the sun,

my god, look, here I am

and no matter what I said to them

they would run away

I would be reported as an old goof

babbling in the marketplace for hard pennies—

they expect me to use the bathroom,

a shadow-picture for their singing flesh

and the pliers of my hand—

a good citizen jacksoff, votes, and looks at Bob Hope—

and even old maids

with husbands killed

making swivel chairs in industry

they walk by

in green in yellow in red

and they have bodies like high-school girls

they perch on their stilts and dare me to break

custom

but to have any of these would take weeks and months

of torture—introduction, niceties, conversation that

cleaves the soul like a rusty axe—

no, no, god damn it! no more!

a man who cannot adjust to society is called a

psychotic, and the boy in the Texas tower

who shot 49 and killed 15 was one,

although in the Marine Corps he got the o.k.

to go ahead—it’s all in the way you’re dressed

and if the beehive says the project

protects the Queen and Goodyear Rubber and so

forth,

but the way I see it from this window

his action was nothing extraordinary or

unexpected and psychiatrists are just paid liars

of a continuing social

disorder.

and soon I get up from the window

and move around

and if I turn on the radio

and luck on Shostakovich or Mahler

or sit down to type a letter to the president,

the voices begin all around me—

“HEY! KNOCK IT OFF!”

“YOU SON OF A BITCH! WE’LL CALL THE LAW!”

on each side of me are two high-rise apartments

things lit at night with blue and green lights

and they have swimming pools that everybody has

too much class to get into

but the rent is very high

and they sit looking at their walls

decorated with pictures of people with chopped-off

heads

and wait to go back to

WORK,

meanwhile, they sense that my sounds are not

their sounds—

66 people on each side of my head

in love with Green Berets and piranhas—

“GOD DAMN YOU, COOL IT!”

these I cannot see through my window

and for this I am glad

my stomach is in bad shape from drinking cheap wine,

and so for them

I become quiet

I listen to their sounds—

their baseball games, their comedies, their quiz shows,

their dry kisses, their kindling safety,

their hard bodies stuffed into the walls and murdered,

and I go to the table

take my madman’s crayons

and begin drawing them on my walls

all of them—

loving, fucking, eating, shitting,

frightened of Christ, frightened of poverty,

frightened of life

they crawl my walls like roaches

and I draw suns between them

and axes and guns and towers and babies

and dogs, cats, animals, and it becomes

difficult to distinguish the animal from the

other, and my whole body sweats, stinks,

as I tremble like a liar from the truth of things,

and then I drink some water, take off my clothing and

go to bed

where I will not sleep

first pulling down all the shades

and then waiting for 3 p.m.

my girls my ladies my way

with nothing going through and nothing coming in and

nothing going out, Cathedrals and Art Museums and

mountains wasted, only the salt of myself, some ants,

old newspapers, my shame, my shame

at not having

killed

(razor, carcrash, turpentine, gaspipe)

(good job, marriage, investments in the market)

what is left of

myself.

birth

I.

reading the Dialogues of Plato when the

doctor walks up and says

do you still read that highbrow

stuff? last time I read that I

was in

high school.

I read it, I tell

him.

well, it’s a girl, 9#, 3 oz. no trouble at

all.

shit. great. when can I see

them?

they’ll let you know. good

night.

II.

I sit down to Plato again. there are 4 people playing

cards. one woman has beautiful legs that she doesn’t hide

and I keep looking at her legs until she covers them with a

blue sweater.

III.

I am called upstairs. they show me the thing through glass.

it’s red as a boiled crab and tough. it will make

it. it will see it through.

hey, look at this, Plato: another broad!

I can see her now on some Sunday afternoon

shaking it in a tight skirt

making boulevards of young men warble in their

guts.

I wave the girl and the nurse

away.

IV.

the woman is still stunned with

drugs but I tell her

a great woman has arrived!

and make my fists into little balls and I

hold up my arms and

snarl-cry.

the nurse is fat and Mexican, has eaten too many

tortillas.

nice to have met you, sweetheart, I

tell her.

V.

then I am back at the shack. I sit down and listen to

the bathtub drip.

I go over and pull all the blinds down and fall on the

couch. all I can hear is tires on

steel streets.

VI.

there is a meeow from the screen and I let him

in: sober, indifferent,

hungry.

VII.

we walk into the kitchen

male, swaggering under the electric light;

4 balls, 2 heads

dominion over all the continent

over ships that sail in and out

over small female things and jewels.

I get down the can of

cat food and open

it. Plato is left in the

glove compartment.

on getting famous and being asked:
can you recite?
can you be there at nine?

…and all they know is kill, these pungent insects,

and as we whirl in new worlds

I am filled with space and I

am ill; I roll a child’s marble

upon the rug, then hear it

clatter off into some new corner

and I puke as the telephone rings;

MR. SPANISH, A VOICE SAYS, WE WANT

YOU TO SPEAK BEFORE THE

SOCIETY. WE FEEL IT WILL BE

VITAL. I hang up, of course,

and I find an orange

in the icebox, but before

I can peel it and eat it

I am ill again.

and

I take off

and fold my shoes, sit down cross-

legged, (like a statue I wish I

owned), and wait, at 3 p.m.,

to die.

the great one:

down at the end of the bar

he used to bum

drinks, now he is a balding man and

I lean close:

you are the finest poet

of our age, you are the

only one that everybody

understands…

we drink coffee, we sit in his small

poorly furnished house, his oil paintings

are on the walls. I am going to give him

money, paper, paint, a better

typewriter. he is going to give me some

original

manuscripts.

I look at him and sense that he fears

me. he coughs, his stomach must feel

oily, dense,

ill.

I tell him:

I know all about you:

you had a cruel Spanish

stepfather, you lived with

numerous whores, drank yourself

senseless,

starved…

yeah, he

says.

I lean closer:

in my own quiet way,

I am a worshipper of

heroes…

when I leave with his manuscripts (signed)

and one of his oils plus

3 wire-coiled and unreadable

notebooks

he doesn’t come to the door with me. there is a

mirror and he sits looking into the

mirror and he

bows his head, ashamed and

finished.

“The Artist,” an ancient sage had once said,

“is always sitting on the doorsteps of the

rich.”

I swing into my caddy, throw the junk in the back and

drive off.

yellow

Seivers was one of the hardest running backs since

Jimmy Brown, and lateral motion too,

like a chorus girl, really, until one day he got hit on

the blind side by Basil Skronski; we carried Seivers off the field

but Skronski had gotten one rib and cracked another.

the next year Seivers wasn’t even good in practice, gun shy as a

squirrel in deer season; he stopped contact, fumbled, couldn’t even

hold a look-in pass or a handoff—all that wasted and he could go the 100 in 9.7.

I’m 45 years old, out of shape, too much beer, but one of the best

assistant coaches in the pro game, and I can’t stand to see a man

jaking it. I got him in the locker room the other day when the whole

squad was in there. I told him, “Seivers, you used to be a player

but now you’re chickenshit!”

“you can’t talk that way to me, Manny!” he said, and I turned him

around, he was lacing on a shoe, and I right-cracked him

right on the chin, he fell against a locker

and then he began to cry—the greatest since Brown,

crying there against the locker, one shoe off, one on.

“come on, men, let’s get outa here!” I told the gang, and we ran

on out, and when we got back he had cleared out, he was gone, his

gear was gone. we got some kid from Illinois running his spot now,

head down, knees high, he don’t care where’s he’s going.

guys like Seivers end up washing dishes for a buck an hour

and that’s just what they deserve.

::: the days run away like wild horses over the hills

the phone rings and it is usually the woman with the

sexy voice from the phone company telling me

to please pay my phone bill,

but this time a voice says quietly,

“you son of a bitch,”

and it is the editor of a dozen magazines,

everything from religious pamphlets

to do-it-yourself abortions,

and he asks,

“why haven’t you called?”

and I say, “we don’t get along.”

“catalysis,” he says,

“dig?”

“dig,” I say,

and then he tells me that he has seen me

in issue No. 5 of Crablegs and Muletears

and that I am getting better,

and I tell him that I am a slow starter

and being only 42

I still stand a chance to spread sand

in Abdulah’s garden,

and he says come on over

I want you to meet a friend

and I tell him I will give him a ring

after the track…

it is Saturday and hot

and the faces of greed rushing past

pinched and dried and impossible

want to make me kneel amongst the lilies and pray

but instead I go to a bar

where I can get good vodka and orange for 70¢

and people keep talking to me,

it is one big lonely hearts club,

people lonely for a voice and a million dollars

and not getting much of either,

and by the 9th race I am one hundred dollars in the hole

and a big colored guy walks up to me

and spreads the tickets of the last winner in his hand

like violin music,

and I say

“fine, fine,”

and he says, “I am with a couple of old broads

and now they are trying to find me,

but I am ducking out, I am going to lock the doors

and get drunk.”

“fine,” I say, and he walks off

and I keep wondering why so many colored people

talk to me, and then I remembered

I was in a bar once and a big black guy swore me into

something called the Muslims;

I had to repeat a lot of fancy words and

we drank all night,

but I thought he was kidding:

I am not out to destroy all the white race—

only a small part of it:

myself.

“who you like?” another guy asks me

and I say “the 3rd horse,” and he says

“the 3 is out,” and walks off

and that is all I want to hear

and I put 20 to win on the 3,

get a screwdriver

and walk down to the last turn

where if you’ve been around long enough

you can pick out the winner

before the stretch drive begins.

and I’m there when the 3 drives past

a length and a half behind the 6,

the others are out,

and it looks close, both are running hard

without signs of tiring

but I have to close the gap

and I look up at the board and see that

the 6 is 25-1 and I am only 7-1

and with a little luck I might make it,

and I did by three-quarters of a length

and the frogs of my mind lined up and

jumped over death (for a little while)

and I walked over and got my $166.

I was in the tub with a beer when the phone rang,

“bastard, where are you?”

it was the editor.

“see you in 30 minutes,” I told him.

“I don’t want any stuff outa you or I’ll lay

you out,” he tells me.

“fine,” I say, “30 minutes then.”

which gives me time for a couple more beers.

the place is in the back in South Hollywood,

a small cell with a water heater

in the bathroom, and a rack of books take up

half the room: much Huxley (Aldous), Lawrence

(not of Arabia), and a lot of tomes and vessels

of people halfway in the playground

between poetry and the novel

and lacking either the motivation or the discipline

to write straight philosophy,

and he had a woman in there

in the last peach fuzz of her youth,

pale orange, a little spiritless,

but quiet, which was good,

and he said, “baby, get the man a beer,”

and I threw him my latest book

which I inscribed, “to a connoisseur

of vagina and verse…”

and he said, “you are getting fat, bastard,

but you are looking better than the last time

I saw you.”

“was that in Paris?” I asked.

“Pasadena, Calif.,” he answered.

“Faulkner’s dead now too,” I said.

“how do you like the bitch?” he asked,

“look at her.”

I looked at her and thanked her for the beer.

“fair stand the fields of France,”

I said.

“I need a hundred and a half,” he told me.

“Jesus,” I answered,

“I was just gonna ask you for the same thing.”

“I hear Harry is back with his old lady.”

“yeah. looking for a job. painting furniture, baby-sitting.

he was even a bartender one night.”

“Harry? a bartender?”

“just for 3 hours. then he said he got tired.”

“tired?”

“‘tired’ is the word he used.”

“I need a hundred and a half.”

“who the hell doesn’t?”

“Faulkner doesn’t,” he said.

“I wonder what he mixed in his drinks? I’ve got to slow

down…”

the bitch had some poems she wrote and I read them

and they were not bad considering that she was built for

other things, and the rest of the night was fairly dull,

no fist fights, too old to tango, tiger asleep in the shade,

and I promised I would write an essay ON THE MEANING OF

MODERN POETRY which he promised to print unseen

and which I knew I would never write.

the night was full of promises, an old tiger

and a peach. I drove home down the side streets,

swinging wide around the police station,

smoking king-sized and humming parts from Carmen

because it was very dark and Bizet drove better than

Ludwig who had his mind on more important things.

I parked out in front and no sooner did I get the car door open

than the rummy downstairs said,

“hey, ace, how about a cold one?”

I took a beer out of the bag and slipped it in through the screen.

“I need a dollar,” he said.

“now, ain’t that a bitch? I was just gonna ask you for the same thing.”

“you’re in a bad mood,” he said.

“sure,” I said, “haven’t you heard? Faulkner’s dead.”

“Faulkner? wasn’t he a bullring jock? Pomona Fairgrounds?

Rudioso? Caliente? you knew the kid?”

“I knew the kid,” I said

and then walked on upstairs.

the rest of the night was no-account, as the Arkies say,

and there were a couple of numbers I could dial,

4 or 5 numbers, some black, some white,

some old, some young,

but I kept thinking of white hospitals

and palm trees in the shade,

and it was quiet, at last it was quiet,

and there are times when you have to come back

and look around, there are times of Ludwig,

there are times of walls,

there are times of thinking of Ernest

and that shotgun raised to his head;

there are times for thinking

of dead loves, dead flowers,

of all the dead, dead people who give you a name,

from Florida to Del Mar, Calif.,

all the sadness like a parade

of gentle fools gone,

water running in sinks,

stockings washed,

gowns worn, thrown away,

the ugly duckling world

quietly slipping away from me

and myself slipping away,

an old tiger,

sick of the battle.

the next morning I was awakened by a knock on the door,

so I ignored it, I never answer the door,

I don’t want to see anybody,

but it kept up with a kind of gentle persistence

so I got up and put on my old yellow robe

dead voices from bedrooms

and opened the door.

“I am here to help the handicapped people,” she said.

“do come in,” I said.

she was a young girl 19, 20, 21,

her eyes as innocent as the map of Texas spread

over the clouds,

and she walked across the rug and sat down

and I went into the kitchen and took the cap

off of 2 beers. my goldfish swam like crazy.

I walked out with the beers, I said,

“love must be always

because stones gone flat with leaning

take ships to sea

take cats and dogs and

everything.”

she laughed and the day began without

error.

worms

a guy told me,

you don’t have to worry about worms when you’re

dead

they never get to you

the body changes like in all different

ways—by the time

they’ve worked through the casket

things have happened and it

always happens

different—

they’ve dug up these old kings outa tombs, ya

know:

one guy was just

a little splotch of black

water, another had a

beard 18 feet long and another had

turned to a kind of rock-like

salt.

yeah? I said.

yeah, he said.

he knew all these things.

he lived high in the hills and had these

tremendous brains.

before I left I reached out and

pulled the worms out of his

eyes nose belly shoes hair ears

and then he said

good night

and I said

good night

and I got in my car and drove off

and the worms laughed

\
all the way home.

to hell with Robert Schumann

I finished my drink and went back

upstairs to hear the second half—

another piano concerto, and

2 are too many and

I couldn’t make it out

having lost my program so

I left the place and drove 21 blocks

South and East

to where 2 flyweights

a Jap and a Mexican were

going at it. the

Mexican butted the Jap and

the Jap bled from a cut

above the eye

but only fought harder

he was grasshopper slim with

very thin arms but

hit very hard. it went all ten and

the Jap got the verdict, another

ten followed. I drank a lot of

beer

kept leaving to piss and

when I came back one time it

was over: k.o.,

and I walked out to my car and

since I was downtown I

drove to where I worked in the

daylight

to see if maybe the place looked less

painful and

I looked through the window and

thought I saw Ralph the stockboy in

there

crawling around on his hands and his

knees. he was an odd one and

the secretaries were afraid of him

and I thought I should call the

police

but then I thought

I don’t care if he raids the

place or sets it on

fire. I got back into my car

and took the freeway back to my

apartment.

I drank a couple glasses of scotch,

set the clock for 6:30

ate a vitamin

thought about a whore in Glendale

checked the ball scores

pissed again

turned out the lights

got into bed (alone)

didn’t pray

thought of places like Japan and

Central Avenue

thought about the dead and

the famous

thought about dying

while the Thames went along without

me and the girls walked up and down the

sidewalks without me

and then I thought I wouldn’t mind

so much

and went to sleep and

slept good.

the seminar

(dedicated to my betters)

Wednesday, 24 July 1969; Morning Session (Robert Hansen

and Allen Truport):

discussed sure discussed

WORK HABITS. Bob ingests, ingests, ingests, so we get those

wonderfully turned—

Allen keeps large notebooks

wherein

he told us

he notes down EVERYTHING. a kind of spatial flowing

viewPOINT.

Allen says

he writes all the time as much as possible;

it’s like hanging a coat in a closet: you’ve

got to get in there. reasonableness may not be

enchanting, but said Allen, it is REWARDING.

a big notebook, he said, by God that’s the

THING!

like Genet on the sand

blowing cock!

Bob said:

what the primary interest is and should be is ingesting,

ingesting, a kind of pulmonary percussion indrawn, tightened and

then placed upon the paper, the marble in tight order of grip,

allowing the function to be the (possible) anguish rather than

any

MESSAGE or a) art-order

b) audience-relationship.

Allen: I want to write

ENOUGH POEMS

so that when I die

all the shit will be out of me, I mean the guff, the nonsense,

the turds yes, ah I mean—that I have expressed enough

ENOUGH you see to

free me.

R.H.—I realize the standard essence of all your POETRY;

I say content is an extension of form. we must barter

for a firmer divinity. the conduct of children,

for instance, is fairly free but

UNFORMED

and in the final

multiplication…useless.

I would say that the difference between

Hansen and Truport is that Hansen KNOWS

what he is

doing.

Evening Session (R.H. and A.T.)

Bob says priests should stick to their robes and leave

POETRY

to him.

I agree

with this.

Allen says political poetry or poetry dealing with immediate causes and reflections is

interesting, and interesting

goes well, badly written

or not, it appears IMPORTANT, is appears sympathetic

and the ONE THING I do not want to do is lose

my AUDIENCE.

Thursday, July 25th; no classes:

a dozen of us had gone over to Buchanan 106

for the hell of

it

to use the lecture room

anyhow

but we found some WOMEN in there

and they appeared HOSTILE when we walked in and

even MORE hostile when we began talking about

POETRY.

their hostility is perhaps understandable because we

DON’T

tend to them.

they’ll just have to WAIT until workshop

CLASSES to get a portion of our

attention.

but it was really something, all of us there together,

talking, TALKING,—Hansen, Truport, Missions, De Costro

Sevadov, and Starwort, all all

together

here in ONE room was

the heart of American POETRY

talking, my

god.

Friday, July 26th; Morning Session:

De Costro dominated the whole damned meeting. he has

big hands and many

IDEAS. Truport appears to be afraid

of De Costro. Hansen cools it. nobody gets along.

yet there is no

YELLING. these are only poets.

De Costro says the root of the thing is transferred to the tree

and the tree dies and

becomes HISTORY

and that

generally

history is pretty

disappointing, it’s easier to chop down a

tree than a poem, he says, history chops

YOU down.

FUCK ALL MEANING! Bob suddenly screams.

then, in softer voice:

we ought to discard.

we all agree that feeling is everything and

we go out for coffee

leaving three girls sitting

there with their dresses hiked-up around their

HIPS.

Monday, July 29th; Morning Session:

I saw all FIVE OF THEM!!!

around a desk

TOGETHER:

Hansen, Truport,

De Costro,

Starwort and

Phillip Maxwell.

Phillip didn’t ARGUE didn’t say much

and left before the meeting was OVER

but explained he’d wait

OUTSIDE for the free lunch. his books haven’t been

GOING well.

Starwort read his Man on a Streetcar Running Backwards

from Bent Lily #8.

I couldn’t really understand his

READING

but will have to see

the work in print before I make a

JUDGMENT.

v    Maybe Allie Denby

will send me a

copy of the issue, tho, alas, I understand it is

now a RARE ITEM

going to $20 out of Fort Lauderdale.

the past can only take place in the PRESENT, if you

know what I mean, said

De Costro.

we all

nodded.

Truport said he was afraid of being BROKE. he was

lined up for one more session at the

U. of K.

but hadn’t heard much

more. of course, he’d been moving

around quite a bit, in TOUCH and

OUT OF TOUCH:

Paris, Cuba, the Congo, India, Moscow and Denver, Colorado.

we spoke of The Cantos.

Pound continually tries to find space

AREAS, ARENAS OF CONTOUR for his extra-cerebral

power-poetic

uningrained…uncontrived soul-mind…like a…like a

whip lashing against the sides of an old

BARN.

we want a COMPLETE EMERGENCE, said De Costro.

nothing half nothing wilted

we want the poetic Christ-thing walking out of

the barn

and Teaching—not from the TOP-down

but through and through and

THROUGH.

god damn it to hell, said Starwort. suddenly.

in taking my notes I could not fit it into

the

conversation.

First Workshop session with R.H.:

he seemed to say a lot that I didn’t understand but

the others seemed to understand

and the session went well.

Bob looked well. I had a

HANGOVER.

Wednesday, July 31st; Morning Session (most of us there):

there were again the old arguments about Vietnam,

Cleaver and the Panthers, all of which, I am afraid, I

no longer

understand.

I am AFRAID

I am getting tired

although the others appear very

energetic.

I need SECURITY, said Hansen. I need a perpetual FATHER

and a GOOD JOB or my work is

HINDERED.

Allen read some of his early stuff. I understand some of it

but FRANKLY, I think he tends to

holler and OVERSTAGE.

I left with a

HEADACHE.

Friday, August 2nd; Morning Session:

Allen spoke of some of the poetry he had seen in

the campus shithouses and said it was pretty

GOOD.

then Wm. Burroughs was discussed

his USE of timely and pertinent

news material that RELATED…

by clipping out words in the paper

and pasting them in DIFFERENT ORDER

A NEW ORDER

was established

and a neutralization of time and event

WAS

established.

THIS WAs imporTANT. YeS. I’ll sAY sO.

we all admitted we often read Time and

Pravda.

then Allen read

AGAIN

this time from UnpubliSHED

WoRk

dIrEcTly FrOM the JOuRnals

there were 250 people attending

and he read LOUDLY and I had another

HANGOVER.

he screamed for FORTYFIVE MINUTES! then became

TERRIBLY

exhausted, you couldn’t hear him, his voice BECAME

a monotonous drone and he asked the audience:

may I stop now?

they applauded LOUDLY.

Sunday, August 4th:

the janitor had locked all the doors on the campus so

we met at Hansen’s room and drank port wine. Denise and

Carol came up but they were SAFE

although everyone appeared a little sullen.

I think it was being LOCKED OUT like that.

later in the night Allen grew angry and slapped

Bob. then Allen read his poetry again, it was

good being there all together all of us.

I have tried to take notes and hope you have

APPRECIATED THEM.

next summer I am sure we will be

INVITED BACK

and I look forward

EAGERLY

to these great American poets

and their DISCUSSION of what makes POETRY GO, what it

iS!!

AnD To haVE tHem rEaD thEiR OWN WORKS OnCe

AgAin.

—Howard Peter, University of L.
August 5, 1969

one for Ging, with klux top

I live among rats and roaches

but there is this high-rise apt., a new one

across from me, glimmering pool, lived in by very young

people with new cars, mostly red or white cars,

and I allow myself to look upon this scene as

some type of miracle world

not because it is possibly so

but because it is easier to think this way,

—why take more knives?—

so today I sat here and I saw one young man

sitting in his red car

sucking his thumb and waiting

as another young man, obviously his friend,

talked to a young woman dressed in kind of long slim short

pants, yes, and a black ill-fitting blouse,

and she had on some kind of high-pointed hat, rather

like the kukluxklan wear, and the other young man sucked, sat and

sucked his thumb

in the

red car and

behind them, through the glass door

the other young people sat and sat and sat and sat

around the blue pool,

and the young woman was angry

she was ugly anyhow and now she was very ugly

but she must have had something to interest the young man

and she said something violent and final

(I couldn’t hear any of it)

and walked off west, away from the young man and the building,

and the young man was flushed in the face, seemingly more stunned

than angry, and then they both sat in the car for a while,

and then the other young man took his thumb out of his

mouth, and started the red car, and then they were

gone.

and through my window and through the glass door

I could see the other young people

sitting sitting sitting

around the blue pool. my miracle crowd, my future

leaders.

to make it round out, I decided that the night before

the young man (not the one with the thumb) had tried

to screw the ugly girl in the pointed hat while they were both

drunk, and that the ugly girl in the pointed hat

felt—for some reason—that this was a damned dirty trick.

she acted bit parts in little theatre—was said to have talent—

had a fairly wealthy father, and her name was Gig or Ging or

something odd like that—and that was mainly why the boys wanted to

screw her: because her first name was Gig or Ging or Aszpupu,

and the boys wanted to say, very much wanted to say:

“I balled with Ging last night.”

all right, so having settled all that,

I put on some coffee and rolled myself something

calming.

communists

we ran the women in a straight line down to the river

clinging to the fear in their rice-stupid heads

clinging to their infants

mice-like sucklings breathing in the air at odds of

one thousand to one;

we shot the men as they kneeled in a circle,

and the death of the men held almost no death,

it was somehow like a movie film,

men of spider arms and legs and a hunk of cloth

to cover the sexual organ.

men hardly born could hardly be killed

and there they were down there now, finally dead,

the sun straining on their faces of weird

puzzlement.

some of the women could fire rifles. we left a small

detachment to decide upon

them. then we fired up the unburned huts and moved on

to the next village.

family, family

I keep looking at the

kid

up

side

down,

and I am tickling

her sides

as her mother pins new

diapers

on,

and the kid doesn’t look like

me

—upsidedown

so I get ready to

kill them both

but

relent:

I don’t even

look like

myself—

rightsideup, so.

shit on it!

I tickle again, say

crazy

words, and and and and

hope

all the while

that this

very unappetizing

world

does not blow up

in all our

laughing

faces.

poem for the death of an American serviceman in Vietnam:

shot through a hole in the

bellybutton

9 miles wide—

out it came:

those Indian head pennies

those old dead whores

the sick sea walking like

pink

toast

past bottles of orange

children

dripping

drip

dry

barometer

lowering

while the guns elevated like

erections—

tossed the apple salad back

into the

sky.

(he died then, stuffing balloons with

marbles as the prince

laughed.)

guilt obsession behind a cloud of rockets:

genuinely traginew, dandy then, babe,

the age-old bile:

dummies stuffed with wax and

steel,

a deeper dark than any dark

we have ever

known—

I do not speak of such obvious things as

skin—

christ, it’s a bad

fix, ghostly true,

I might even say

off the top of the bottle

that I suffer more than

most, haha, but

I’ve also found that

good men

neither talk about their virtues or

their possibilities,

—strike deep here,

catch fish, headaches, sores, blisters,

traffic tickets, tooth decay, hatred from

lesbians, the surgeon’s brown

finger—

if death is so fearful

then life must be

good?

dandy then, babe, genuinely

traginew, and

I’ve found out why men

sign their names to their

works—

not that they created them

but more

than the others did

not.

even the sun was afraid

they’d stuck him in the shoulder and

he came out

pissed—

feeling all the space of ground

feeling the sunshine

and

looking for somebody.

it stood there.

it seemed that even the sun was afraid of the

bull.

the matador screamed something

shook and flagged the cape.

the bull came at him.

he gave him the cape. but the mat did not get very

close.

then the bull saw the padded

horse, the blindfolded horse,

and he trotted over

and began working his horns against the horse’s

side and underside.

the pic

there on top of the horse

lanced him good

he stuck him deep and hard with the

pole

really muscling it in

screwing it in deep

right in the top part of the back there

up near the neck.

this makes the bull go more for the horse—

he probably thinks the horse is doing it to him—

and as he goes more for the horse

he gets drilled more and more

by the chickenshit

lance.

the bull left the horse

went for the cape

then came back to the horse.

then he got another drilling by the

pic.

he does not any longer quite look like the

bull who first ran into the ring.

but they haven’t cut him down enough

they have something else for

him: the banderillas.

short sharp pieces that are jammed into the upper back

and neck, the placement of these does appear

dangerous.

no cape is used and these young Mexican boys

stupid and with dirty

behinds

they leap into the air and make the

placements as the bull runs

by.

we watched them make the

placements.

now the bull was properly ready for the matador to be

brave.

the neck and back muscles were severed, shredded in

many places.

the head came

down.

Harry took a drink. “these Mexican bulls aren’t any

good. you oughta see the Spanish bulls. they got horns

like this”:

he showed me how they had horns like that. with his

hands. then we both had a

drink.

the matador did not seem to get in very

close. the bull kept getting in those

tired and desperate lunges at the cape

getting more and more winded

more and more

useless.

each of the matador’s movements had some meaning, some

name. the Mexicans knew it. the drunken Americans in the

shade with good jobs and subnormal wives

didn’t know anything. they rooted for the

bull.

they didn’t know that it took guts

to even do a bad job with the bull.

well, this bull was bad and the matador was bad

but the matador was worse than the

bull, and I guess that’s about as bad as the act can

get.

except when the bull is so much less worse than the

matador and the mat gets gored and the Americans go

home happy and

fuck all night

trying to forget about the job in the

morning.

kill time came. the mat knew what to do. he knew the

spot. it was like running a hot poker into a

barrel of loose tin foil.

the bull

beaten and stabbed about the neck and back

winded totally by ripping at a vision of a

red cape that only

gave, gave, gave

folded over the horn forever—

the bull was winded spiritually as

well.

and finally stood

disgusted and doomed

looking

LOOKING.

we had another

drink. we knew the plot, the hero, the whole

fucking thing. the sword went

in.

but it wasn’t

over.

the bull stood there.

and with the sword cutting his vitals

they came up.

4 or 5 Mexicans with dirty

behinds. including the

mat.

and they turned

him. flicked their capes at

him. punched him on the

nose.

still he wouldn’t

fall.

they were trying to push him into death

but he was hanging

in.

and every now and then

the head would remember

and give a lunge of

horn and

they would step back

remembering their own deaths.

then the mat came up

pulled the sword

out, stuck it home

again.

still no good.

the bull would not go

down.

we had another drink.

“you see,” said Harry, “they keep turning him. that

sword is cutting him. every time they make him move,

the sword cuts again.”

finally somebody took his foot and

kicked the bull over and the bull

fell down.

but still

it wasn’t any

good.

the bull kept kicking his

legs, trying to get

up. he wouldn’t

quit.

so then a little fat chap came

out. he was all dressed in white and wore a little

white butcher’s cap. he seemed quite

angry.

he had a short blade and walked up

and very angry and quick

he chopped and chopped and chopped and

chopped. it appeared that he was chopping at the

bull’s head, his

brain.

the bull couldn’t get at the boy in the

butcher’s cap. he had to

take it. finally one of the chops

took.

you could SEE the bull

die. the bull gave it

up. the crowd

cheered.

Harry took a

drink, that was the end of that

pint. and that

matador.

“what’s the name of the next

bull?” I asked

Harry.

“I don’t know. the light is

bad.”

anyhow, the next bull came

out.

we had one more pint and the

drive back in.

on a grant

…an ocean liner

the Captain smiles and farts and knows my

name

the sea is boiling and smells of

torn chunks and warm raw meat

and

half-daft sick spiders try to

wind their dead legs around each other

around everything

but they tangle off slide off drift off

losing legs against the prow

and wanting to scream and not being able to

scream

while

I am on the grant from a University

and

translating Rimbaud and Lorca and

Günter Grass over and over

again

then

after a conversation on Proust and

Patchen I rape a

rich beautiful girl in my cabin

and

afterwards she turns into a

dead peach tree which I

hang on the wall

then

I awaken in a small dirty bedroom and the

woman walks in:

“listen, I need a stroller. the kid is

getting too heavy to carry.”

“o.k., o.k.”

“but when? when?”

“not today. too god damned

tired.”

“tomorrow?”

“tomorrow, sure.”

finish

the hearse comes through the room filled with

the beheaded, the disappeared, the living

mad.

the flies are a glue of sticky paste

their wings will not

lift.

I watch an old woman beat her cat

with a broom.

the weather is unendurable

a dirty trick by

God.

the water has evaporated from the

toilet bowl

the telephone rings without

sound

the small limp arm petering against the

bell.

I see a boy on his

bicycle

the spokes collapse

the tires turn into

snakes and melt

away.

the newspaper is oven-hot

men murder each other in the streets

without reason.

the worst men have the best jobs

the best men have the worst jobs or are

unemployed or locked in

madhouses.

I have 4 cans of food left.

air-conditioned troops go from house to

house

from room to room

jailing, shooting, bayoneting

the people.

we have done this to ourselves, we

deserve this

we are like roses that have never bothered to

bloom when we should have bloomed and

it is as if

the sun has become disgusted with

waiting

it is as if the sun were a mind that has

given up on us.

I go out on the back porch

and look across the sea of dead plants

now thorns and sticks shivering in a

windless sky.

somehow I’m glad we’re through

finished—

the works of Art

the wars

the decayed loves

the way we lived each day.

when the troops come up here

I don’t care what they do for

we already killed ourselves

each day we got out of bed.

I go back into the kitchen

spill some hash from a soft

can, it is almost cooked

already

and I sit

eating, looking at my

fingernails.

the sweat comes down behind my

ears and I hear the

shooting in the streets and

I chew and wait

without wonder.

the underground

the place was crowded.

the editor told me,

“Charley get some chairs from upstairs,

there are more chairs upstairs.”

I brought them down and we opened the beer and

the editor said,

“we’re not getting enough advertising,

the boat might go down,”

so they started talking about how to get

advertising.

I kept drinking the beer

and had to piss

and when I got back

the girl next to me said,

“we ought to evacuate the city,

that’s what we ought to do.”

I said, “I’d rather listen to Joseph Haydn.”

she said, “just think of it,

if everybody left the city!”

“they’d only be someplace else

stinking it up,” I said.

“I don’t think you like

people,” she said, pulling her short skirt down

as much as possible.

“just to fuck with,” I said.

then I went to the bar next door and

bought 3 more packs of beer.

when I got back they were talking Revolution.

so here I was back in 1935 again,

only I was old and they were young. I was at least

20 years older than anybody in the room,

and I thought, what the hell am I doing

here?

soon the meeting ended

and they went out into the night,

those young ones

and I picked up the phone, I got

John T.,

“John, you o.k.? I’m low tonight.

suppose I come over and get

drunk?”

“sure, Charley, we’ll be waiting.”

“Charley,” said the editor, “I guess we’ve got to

put the chairs back

upstairs.”

we carried the chairs back upstairs

the

revolution was

over.

from the Dept. of English

100 million Chinese bugs on the stairway to

hell,

come drink with me

rub my back with me;

this filth-pitched room,

floor covered with yellow newspapers

3 weeks old; bottle caps, a red

pencil, a rip of

toilet paper, these odd bits of

broken things;

the flies worry me as ice cream ladies

walk past my window;

at night I sleep, try to sleep

between mounds of stinking laundry;

ghosts come out,

play dirty games, evil games, games of horror with

my mind;

in the morning there is blood on the sheet

from a broken sore upon my

back.

putting on a shirt that rips across my

back, rotten rag of a thing,

and putting on pants with a rip in the

crotch, I find in the mailbox

(along with other threats):

“Dear Mr. Bukowski:

Would like to see more of your poems for

possible inclusion in

_____Poetry Review.

How’s it going?”

footnote upon the construction of the masses:

some people are young and nothing

else and

some people are old and nothing

else

and some people are in between and

just in between.

and if the flies wore clothes on their

backs

and all the buildings burned in

golden fire,

if heaven shook like a belly

dancer

and all the atom bombs began to

cry,

some people would be young and nothing

else and

some people old and nothing

else,

and the rest would be the same

the rest would be the same.

the few who are different

are eliminated quickly enough

by the police, by their mothers, their

brothers, others; by

themselves.

all that’s left is what you

see.

it’s

hard.

kaakaa & other immolations

wondrous, sure, kid, you want more

applejuice? how can you drink that goddamned

stuff? I hate it. what? no, I’m not Dr.

Vogel. I’m the daddy. your old man. where’s mama?

she’s out joining an artist’s colony, oh, that’s a place

where people go who aren’t

artists. yes, that’s the way it works almost

everywhere, sometimes you can go into a hospital and

it can be 40 floors high and there won’t be a doctor in

there, and hard to find a nurse either.

what’s a hospital? a hospital is just a bunch of

disconnected buttons, dying people and very sophisticated and

comfortable orderlies, but the whole world is like this:

nobody knows what they are supposed to know—

poets can’t write poetry

mechanics can’t fix your car

fighters can’t fight

lovers can’t love

preachers can’t preach. it’s even like that with

armies: whole armies led without generals,

whole nations led without leaders, why the whole thing is like

trying to copulate with a wooden

dick…oh, pardon me!

how old are you? three? three. ah. three fingers, that’s nice!

you learn fast, my little ducky. what? more

applejuice? o.k.

you wanna play train? you wanna take me for a ride?

o.k., Tucson, we’ll go to Tucson, what the hell!

damn it, I don’t KNOW if we’re there yet, you’re

driving!

what? we’re on the way BACK already?

you want some candy? shit, you been eatin’ candy for hours!

listen, I don’t KNOW when your mother will be back, uh?

well,

after signing up for the artist’s colony she’s going to a poetry

reading. what’s a poetry reading? a poetry reading is where

people gather and read their poetry to each other, the ones

mostly who can’t write poetry.

what’s poetry? nobody knows. it changes. it works by itself

like a snail crawling up the side of a house. oh, that’s a big

squashy thing that goes all gooey and slimy when you

step on

it. am I a snail?

I guess so kid, what?

you wanna kaakaa?

o.k., go ahead. can you get your own pants down? I don’t

see

you very often, oh, you want the light on? you want me

to stay

or go away? stay? fine, then.

now kaakaa, little one, that’s it…

kaakaa…

so you can grow up to be a big woman and

do what big women

do.

kaakaa.

at’s it, sweet,

ain’t it funny?

mama kaakaa too.

oh yeah

wow!

that’s all right!

now wipe your ass.

no, better than

that! there, that’s

better.

you say I’m kaakaa!

hey that’s

good! I like that!

very funny.

now let’s go get some more beer and

applejuice.

a problem of temperament

I played the radio all night the night of the 17th.

and the neighbors applauded

and the landlady knocked on the door

and said

PLEASE

PLEASE

PLEASE

MOVE,

you make the sheets dirty

where does the blood come from?

you never work.

you lay around and talk to the radio

and drink

and you have a beard

and you are always smirking

and bringing those women

to your room

and you never comb your hair

or shine your shoes

and your shirts are wrinkled

why don’t you leave?

you are making the neighbors

unhappy,

please make us all happy

and go away!

go to hell, baby, I hissed through

the keyhole; mah rent’s paid ’til

Wednesday. can I show you a watercolor

nude painted in 1887 by an unknown German

artist? I have it insured for

$1,000.

unrelenting, she stamped down the hall.

no artiste, she. I would

like to see her in the nude, though.

perhaps I could paint my way

to freedom. no?

poetess

For S.S.V.

she lived in a small room by the freeway and she

wrote like a man—somebody who worked on the dock

—and I tapped on her window and she let me in, I

climbed through the window and I sat down as the

stupid fingers of my mind reached around the room,

I told her I had been on a drunk and that I had to

cut my toenails (they hurt) and I told her that

there were a lot of people getting on my nerves like

a broken glove compartment and she walked over and

kissed me, asked if I wanted coffee and if I had

been eating, and then she told me her radio was brok-

en—she had dropped it on the floor. and I took a

knife blade and worked at the screws in the back.

be careful, she said, it says

there is danger of shock, and I told

her: I am immortal, I can’t get or

be killed.

she set a cheese sandwich and a cup of coffee in

front of me and I straightened up the loose tubes,

there seemed to be no broken ones, but it was get-

ting to be time for the first race and I told her,

Jesus, I don’t have time!

if you’re immortal, she said,

you have plenty of time.

I ate the cheese sandwich and drank the coffee.

see you tonight, I said, I’ll

put the god damned thing together

tonight.

I climbed out the window and into my car. the sun

came down in the dust and dirt of the parking lot

making everything a good soft yellow and brown, and

the vines on the fence smelled green the way green

smells, and I drove out backing up, waving to her

through the windshield and she stood in the window

waving and smiling, and I backed up the alley and

around the street, put it in forward and ran

along the pavement toward the freeway, out of there,

thinking about what I had done or hadn’t done to

the radio (or her), feeling as if I had left an

army in trouble during battle, but then some kid

in a Volks

cut across me without a signal

and I forgot about all the rest

and I pushed the pedal down and

moved after him.

the miracle

To work with an art form

does not mean to

screw off like a tapeworm

with his belly full,

nor does it justify grandeur

or greed, nor at all times

seriousness, but I would guess

that it calls upon the best men

at their best times,

and when they die

and something else does not,

we have seen the miracle of immortality:

men arrived as men,

departed as gods—

gods we knew were here,

gods that now let us go on

when all else says stop.

Mongolian coasts shining in light

Mongolian coasts shining in light,

I listen to the pulse of the sun,

the tiger is the same to all of us

and high oh

so high on the branch

our oriole

sings.

About the Author

CHARLES BUKOWSKI is one of America’s best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose, and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in Andernach, Germany, to an American soldier father and a German mother in 1920, and brought to the United States at the age of three. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for fifty years. He published his first story in 1944 when he was twenty-four and began writing poetry at the age of thirty-five. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel, Pulp (1994).

During his lifetime he published more than forty-five books of poetry and prose, including the novels Post Office (1971), Factotum (1975), Women (1978), Ham on Rye (1982), and Hollywood (1989). Among his most recent books are the posthumous editions of What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (1999), Open All Night: New Poems (2000), Beerspit Night and Cursing: The Correspondence of Charles Bukowski and Sheri Martinelli, 1960-1967(2001), and Night Torn Mad with Footsteps: New Poems (2001), sifting through the madness for the Word, the line, the way: New Poems (2003), and The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain (2004).

All of his books have now been published in translation in over a dozen languages and his worldwide popularity remains undiminished. In the years to come Ecco will publish additional volumes of previously uncollected poetry and letters.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

Also by CHARLES BUKOWSKI

The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills (1969)

Post Office (1971)

Mockingbird Wish Me Luck (1972)

South of No North (1973)

Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame: Selected Poems 1955-1973 (1974)

Factotum (1975)

Love is a Dog from Hell (1977)

Women (1978)

You Kissed Lilly (1978)

play the piano drunk like a percussion instrument until the fingers begin to bleed a bit (1979)

Shakespeare Never Did This (1979)

Dangling in the Tournefortia (1981)

Ham on Rye (1982)

Bring Me Your Love (1983)

Hot Water Music (1983)

There’s No Business (1984)

War All the Time: Poems 1981-1984 (1984)

You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense (1986)

The Movie: “Barfly” (1987)

The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems 1946-1966 (1988)

Hollywood (1989)

Septuagenarian Stew: Stories & Poems (1990)

The Last Night of the Earth Poems (1992)

Screams from the Balcony: Selected Letters 1960-1970 (1993)

Pulp (1994)

Living on Luck: Selected Letters 1960s-1970s (Volume 2) (1995)

Betting on the Muse: Poems & Stories (1996)

Bone Palace Ballet: New Poems (1997)

The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship (1998)

Reach for the Sun: Selected Letters 1978-1994 (Volume 3) (1999)

What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire: New Poems (1999)

Open All Night: New Poems (2000)

Night Torn Mad with Footsteps: New Poems (2001)

Beerspit Night and Cursing: The Correspondence of Charles Bukowski & Sheri Martinelli 1960-1967 (2001)

sifting through the madness for the Word, the line, the way: new poems (2003)

The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain (2004)

Copyright

THE DAYS RUN AWAY LIKE WILD HORSES OVER THE HILLS. Copyright © 1969 by Charles Bukowski. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Mobipocket Reader July 2007 ISBN 978-0-06-145760-9

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