this is many years later
and I still can’t figure it out
but it was in New York
and New York has its own rules and
anyhow, I am sitting around in one of those
places
with many round tables
with their tough and terrible knights;
me, I don’t feel so good, as usual,
neither tough nor terrible,
just rotten,
and I am sitting with some woman
with some kind of hood over her head,
she is half crazy
but that doesn’t matter.
she has a name, Fay,
I think it was,
and we have been drinking, going from place to
place, and we went in there,
and it seemed terribly
lively
because there was a dwarf about 3
feet tall
and the dwarf was walking around
drunk
and he’d stop at a table
and look at a man
and say,
“well, what YOU got to say?”
and then the dwarf would crush him one in the mouth,
only the dwarf had very good hands and
one hell of a punch.
then everybody would laugh and the dwarf would
go to the bar
for another drink.
“keep him away from me, Fay!” I told her.
“uh? whatzat? what? who?”
“keep him away from me!”
“what? waz? away?”
the dwarf unloaded on another guy
and everybody laughed,
even I laughed. that dwarf could punch.
he had a lot of
practice.
he danced to the bar
doing a little soft shoe
then he noticed a sailor
very blond and young and
scared.
the kid pissed in his pants
and smiled at the
dwarf.
the dwarf chopped him a
good one;
his next smile was a
bit bloody.
then the dwarf put another on his chin
knocking the sailor over
backward in his
chair, out
cold.
k.o.! all hail the
champion!
then the dwarf saw
me. the man at the table in
back.
“keep him away from me, Fay!”
I said.
“lez have another drink!” she said.
(she had a full drink in front of her.)
he came up to me
in all 3 feet of his
glory.
“well, what YOU got to say?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t have anything to say
that he would understand.
“nothing, hah?”
I nodded. it came. I felt my chair rock, then
settle again on its legs. shots of red and yellow and
blue light followed, then laughter.
sitting there
I swung back.
his poor 3 feet slid along the floor like a
rag doll
and then they were down on me
it seemed like a dozen men
(but it might have been 3 or 4)
and I caught some more
good ones.
then I was thrown outside,
I got up
and found a hanky
and tried to stop
the worst of the blood
and Fay was there,
“you coward, you hit that little
man!”
I walked down the street
but she was right there with me
and we went into the next place
and I looked around
and seeing that everyone was more than
4 feet tall,
I ordered 2 more
drinks.
the elephants of Vietnam
first they used to, he told me,
gun and bomb the elephants,
you could hear their screams over all the other sounds;
but you flew high to bomb the people,
you never saw it,
just a little flash from way up
but with the elephants
you could watch it happen
and hear how they screamed;
I’d tell my buddies, listen, you guys
stop that,
but they just laughed
as the elephants scattered
throwing up their trunks (if they weren’t blown off)
opening their mouths
wide and
kicking their dumb clumsy legs
as blood ran out of big holes in their bellies.
then we’d fly back,
mission completed.
we’d get everything:
convoys, dumps, bridges, people, elephants and
all the rest.
he told me later, I
felt bad about the
elephants.
breakfast
waking up on those mornings in the drunk tank,
busted lower lip, loose teeth, brains swimming in
a cacophony not yours, with
all those strange others swathed in rags, noisy
now in their mad sleep, with nothing for
company but a stopped-up toilet,
a cold hard floor
and somebody else’s
law.
and there was always one early voice, a loud voice:
“BREAKFAST!”
you usually didn’t want it
but if you did
before you could gather your thoughts
and scramble to your feet
the cell door was slammed
shut.
now each morning it’s like a slow contented
dream, I find my slippers, put them on,
do the bathroom bit, then walk down the
stairway in a swirl of furry bodies, I am
the feeder, the god, I clean the cat bowls, open
the cans and talk to them and they get excited and
make their anxious sounds.
I put the bowls down as each cat moves to
its own bowl, then I refill the water dish
and watch all five of them eating
peacefully.
I walk back up the stairway to the bedroom
where my wife is still asleep, I crawl beneath
the sheets with her, place my back to the sun
and am soon asleep again.
you have to die a few times before you can really
live.
inverted love song
I could scream down 90 mountains
to less than dust
if only one living human had eyes in the head
and heart in the body,
but there is no chance,
my god,
no chance.
rat with rat dog with dog hog with hog,
play the piano drunk
listen to the drunk piano,
realize the myth of mercy
stand still
as even a child’s voice snarls
and we have not been fooled,
it was only that we wanted to believe.
&n
bsp; Salty Dogs
got to the track early to study the odds and here’s
this man coming by
dusting seats. he keeps at his work, dusting, most
probably glad to have his simple job.
I’m one of those who doesn’t think there is much difference
between an atomic scientist and a man who cleans the seats
except for the luck of the draw—
parents with enough money to point you safely toward a more
generous life.
“how’s it going?” I asked him as he dusted by.
“o.k., how about you?” he asked.
“I do all right with the horses. it’s with the women I lose.”
he laughed. “yeah. a man has two or three bad experiences,
it really sets him back.”
“I don’t mind two or three,” I told him, “I mind
eleven or twelve.”
“man, you must know something by now. who do you like in the
first?”
I told him that Salty Dog was reading 4-to-1 and should
finish one-two. (45 minutes later it did.) but it wasn’t 45
minutes later yet. the man went on dusting and I thought of all my
rotten jobs and how glad I was to have them. for a
while. then it was a matter of quitting or getting fired.
both felt good.
it’s when you live with one woman for more than two
years you know what’s bound to happen only you don’t know
exactly why. it’s not in the chart. it’s in past performance,
not in the chart.
my friend, dusting the seats, he didn’t know exactly why either.
I walked over for a coffee. the slim girl behind the
counter was a brunette with a tiny blue flower in her hair,
nice eyes, nice smile. I paid for my coffee.
“good luck,” she said.
“you too,” I said.
I took the coffee to my seat, the wind came up from the west,
I took a sip and waited for the action, thinking of
many things, too many things. the scene dissolved into grass and
trees and the dirt track and I remembered dirty shades in
dirty rooming houses flapping back and forth in a light wind,
and I thought about dirty troops plundering some new village,
and about my old girlfriends unhappy again with their new men.
I sat and drank my coffee and waited for the first
race.
brainless eyes
in the bitter morning
high roses grow
and the frogs celebrate
victory.
in the empty balloon of night
nothing grows;
the night
gnaws and belches
and victory is celebrated only
by indecent ladies
with spread legs
and brainless eyes.
at noon,
say at noon,
something happens
finally.
the signal changes
the traffic moves through.
life itself is not the miracle.
that pain should be so constant,
that’s the miracle—
that hammer of the thing
when you can’t even scream or weep
and it sits all over you
looking into your eyes
eating your flesh.
morning night and noon
the traffic moves through
and the murder and treachery
of friends and lovers
and all the people
move through you.
pain is the joy of knowing
the unkindest truth
that arrives without
warning.
life is being alone
death is being alone.
even the fools weep
morning night and noon.
unbelievable
I’ve been going to the track for
decades
but I saw something new
today.
2 horses threw their riders.
usually when a horse throws
his or her rider
he (or she) continues to run
in the same direction as
the other horses.
but
this time
both horses turned
and began to run in the
opposite direction,
in other words,
toward the oncoming
field.
it was a 5/8ths mile
track
and they were
approaching one another
pretty fast.
the announcer warned
the riders
and as they came
around the last curve
and into the stretch
here came the other
2 horses right at
them.
there was no screaming.
there was a dead
silence.
you could hear the hooves
pounding the dirt.
then one horse swung
wide
and went outside the
field.
the other headed straight
into it
and passed right through
between the other
horses.
the other horses reached
the wire.
mine had won.
but the judges held an
inquiry and it was
declared
no contest.
I didn’t give a
damn.
I kept seeing that horse
rushing at the field
and passing right through,
untouched.
a miracle.
war and peace
to experience
real agony
is
something
hard
to write about,
impossible
to understand
while it
grips you;
you’re
frightened
out of
your
wits,
can’t sit
still,
move
or even
go
decently
insane.
and then
when your
composure
finally
returns
and you are
able to
evaluate
the
experience
it’s almost as
if it
had happened
to
somebody
else
because
look at
you
now:
calm
detached
say
cleaning your
fingernails
looking through
a
drawer
for
stamps
applying
&nbs
p; polish
to your
shoes
or
paying the
electric
bill.
life is
and is not
a
gentle
bore.
the harder you try
the waste of words
continues with a stunning
persistence
as the waiter runs by carrying the loaded
tray
for all the wise white boys who laugh at
us.
no matter. no matter,
as long as your shoes are tied and
nobody is walking too close
behind.
just being able to scratch yourself and
be nonchalant is victory
enough.
those constipated minds that seek
larger meaning
will be dispatched with the other
garbage.
back off.
if there is light
it will find
you.
all the little girls
it was up in northern California
and he stood in the pulpit
and he had been reading for some time
he had been reading many poems about
Mother Nature and the inherent goodness
of man.
he believed that everything was
all right with the world.
and you couldn’t blame him:
he was a tenured professor who had never
been in jail or in a whorehouse;
who had never had his used car die
on the freeway; who
had never needed more than
three drinks during his wildest
evening;
who had never been rolled, flogged or
mugged;
who had never been bitten by a dog;
who got regular gracious letters from Gary
Snyder, and whose face was
kindly, unmarked and
tender. finally,
his wife had never betrayed him,
nor had his luck.
he said, “I’m just going to read
three more poems and then I’m going
to step down from here and let
Chinaski read.”
“oh no,” said all the
little girls in their pink and blue
and white and orange and lavender