Burning in Water, Drowing in Flame (5 page)

red summers and black satin

charcoal and blood

ringing the sheets

while snails are stepped on

and moths go batty

trying to put on the eyes

of lightbulbs in

artificial cities;

I light her a cigarette

and she blows up a plasma

of relaxation

to prove we’ve both been

good lovers—

white on black, and in black;

and her toes strike dark

intersections

in my beefy sheets

she says, that elevator boy…

y’know him?

I say yes.

a bastard…beats his wife.

I put my hand

flat to the surface

where the curve goes down.

damn for an OLD man,

you sure likes to play!

I reach over and pick up

the bottle, suck it down

flat on my back,

the suds like soap

gagging me with gulp-dull

sounds, and she’s listening,

eyes rolling

like newsreel cameras,

and suddenly I have got to laugh,

I spiral out a whale-stream

of foam and liquid

majestic against the wallpaper

not knowing why,

and she laughs

looking down at my flat madness,

she laughs

holding her cigarette

high in the air

with one arm

smoke sifting off

ignored

and we are in bed together

laughing

and we don’t care,

about anything

and it is very

very funny.

in the slow Mexican air I watched the bull die

and they cut off his ear, and his great head held

no more terror than a rock.

driving back the next day we stopped at the Mission

and watched the golden red and blue flowers pulling

like tigers in the wind.

set this to metric: the bull, and the fort of Christ:

the matador on his knees, the dead bull his baby;

and the priest staring from the window

like a caged bear.

you may argue in the market place and pull at your

doubts with silken strings: I will only tell you

this: I have lived in both their temples,

believing all and nothing—perhaps, now, they will

die in mine.

it sits outside my window now

like an old woman going to market;

it sits and watches me,

it sweats nervously

through wire and fog and dog-bark

until suddenly

I slam the screen with a newspaper

like slapping at a fly

and you could hear the scream

over this plain city,

and then it left.

the way to end a poem

like this

is to become suddenly

quiet.

he carried a piece of

carbon, a blade and a whip

and at night he

feared his head

and covered it with blankets

until one morning in Los Angeles

it snowed

and I saw the snow

and I knew that my father

could control nothing,

and when

I got somewhat larger

and took my first boxcar

out, I sat there in

the lime

the burning lime

of having nothing

moving into the desert

for the first time

I sang.

red-eyed and dizzy as I

the bird came flying

all the way from Egypt

at 5 o’clock in the morning,

and Maria almost stumbled on her spikes:

what was it, a rocket?

and we went upstairs.

I poured two glasses of port

and we sat there as the money-grubbers

were belled out of their miserable nests

and Maria went in and watered

the bowl

and I sat there rubbing my three-day beard

thinking about the crazy bird

and it came out like this:

all that really mattered was

going someplace

the faster the better

because it left less waiting

to die. Maria came out

and peeled back the covers

and I tore off my greasy clothes

and crawled beneath the sweaty sheets,

closing my eyes to the sound and the sunlight,

and I heard her drop her spiked feet

and her frozen toes walked the backs of my calves

and I named the bird

Mr. America

and then quickly I went to sleep.

there are these small cliffs

above the sea

and it is night, late night;

I have been unable to sleep,

and with my car above me

like a steel mother

I crawl down the cliffs,

breaking bits of rock

and being scratched by witless

and scrabby seaplants,

I make my way down

clumsy, misplaced,

an oddity on the shore,

and all around me are the lovers,

the two-headed beasts

turning to stare

at the madness

of a singular self;

shamed, I move on through them

to climb a row of wet boulders that

break the sea-stroke

into sheaths of white;

the moonlight is wet

on the bald stone

and now that I’m there

I don’t want to be there

the sea stinks

and makes flushing sounds

like a toilet

it is a bad place to die;

any place is a bad place to die,

but better a yellow room

with known walls and dusty

lampshades; so…

still stupidly off-course

like a jackal in a land of lions,

I make my way back through

them, through their blankets

and fires and kisses and sandy thumpings,

back up the cliff I climb

worse off, kicking clods,

and there the black sky, the black sea

behind me

lost in the game,

and I have left my shoes down there

with them 2 empty shoes,

and in the car

I start the engine,

headlights on I back away,

swing left drive East,

climb up the land and out,

bare feet on worn ribbed rubber

out of there

looking for

another place.

don’t ever get the idea I am a poet; you can see me

at the racetrack any day half drunk

betting quarters, sidewheelers and straight thoroughs,

but let me tell you, there are some women there

who go where the money goes, and sometimes when you

look at these whores these onehundreddollar whores

you wonder sometimes if nature isn’t playing a joke

dealing out so much breast and ass and the way

it’s all hung together, you look and you look and

you look and you can’t believe it; there are ordinary women

and then there is something else that wants to make you

tear up paintings and break albums of Beethoven

across the back of the john; anyhow, the season

was dragging and the big boys were getting busted,

all the non-pros, the producers, the cameramen,

the pushers of Mary, the fur salesmen, the owners

themselves, and Saint Louie was running this day:

a sidewheeler that broke when he got in close;

he ran with his head down and was mean and ugly

and 35 to 1, and I put a ten down on him.

the driver broke him wide

took him out by the fence where he’d be alone

even if he had to travel four times as far,

and that’s the way he went it

all the way by the outer fence

traveling two miles in one

and he won like he was mad as hell

and he wasn’t even tired,

and the biggest blonde of all

all ass and breast, hardly anything else

went to the payoff window with me.

that night I couldn’t destroy her

although the springs shot sparks

and they pounded on the walls.

later she sat there in her slip

drinking Old Grandad

and she said

what’s a guy like you doing

living in a dump like this?

and I said

I’m a poet

and she threw back her beautiful head and laughed.

you? you…a poet?

I guess you’re right, I said, I guess you’re right.

but still she looked good to me, she still looked good,

and all thanks to an ugly horse

who wrote this poem.

I cross the room

to the last wall

the last window

the last pink sun

with its arms around the world

with its arms around me

I hear the death-whisper of the heron

the bone-thoughts of sea-things

that are almost rock;

this screen caved like a soul

and scrawled with flies,

my tensions and damnations

are those of a pig,

pink sun pink sun

I hate your holiness

crawling your gilded cross of life

as my fingers and feet and face

come down to this

sleeping with the whore of your fancy wife

you must some day die for nothing

as I

have lived.

yes, they begin out in a willow, I think

the starch mountains begin out in the willow

and keep right on going without regard for

pumas and nectarines

somehow these mountains are like

an old woman with a bad memory and

a shopping basket.

we are in a basin, that is the

idea. down in the sand and the alleys,

this land punched-in, cuffed-out, divided,

held like a crucifix in a deathhand,

this land bought, resold, bought again and

sold again, the wars long over,

the Spaniards all the way back in Spain

down in the thimble again, and now

real estaters, subdividers, landlords, freeway

engineers arguing. this is their land and

I walk on it, live on it a little while

near Hollywood here I see young men in rooms

listening to glazed recordings

and I think too of old men sick of music

sick of everything, and death like suicide

I think is sometimes voluntary, and to get your

hold on the land here it is best to return to the

Grand Central Market, see the old Mexican women,

the poor…I am sure you have seen these same women

many years before

arguing

with the same young Japanese clerks

witty, knowledgeable and golden

among their soaring store of oranges, apples

avocados, tomatoes, cucumbers—

and you know how
these
look, they do look good

as if you could eat them all

light a cigar and smoke away the bad world.

then it’s best to go back to the bars, the same bars

wooden, stale, merciless, green

with the young policeman walking through

scared and looking for trouble,

and the beer is still bad

it has an edge that already mixes with vomit and

decay, and you’ve got to be strong in the shadows

to ignore it, to ignore the poor and to ignore yourself

and the shopping bag between your legs

down there feeling good with its avocados and

oranges and fresh fish and wine bottles, who needs

a Fort Lauderdale winter?

25 years ago there used to be a whore there

with a film over one eye, who was too fat

and made little silver bells out of cigarette

tinfoil. the sun seemed warmer then

although this was probably not

true, and you take your shopping bag

outside and walk along the street

and the green beer hangs there

just above your stomach like

a short and shameful shawl, and

you look around and no longer

see any

old men.