Love is a Dog from Hell (4 page)

 

“your poems about the girls will still be around

50 years from now when the girls are gone,”

my editor phones me.

 

dear editor:

the girls appear to be gone

already.

 

I know what you mean

 

but give me one truly alive woman

tonight

walking across the floor toward me

 

and you can have all the poems

 

the good ones

the bad ones

or any that I might write

after this one.

 

I know what you mean.

 

do you know what I mean?

 

escape from the black widow spider

is a miracle as great as art.

what a web she can weave

slowly drawing you to her

she’ll embrace you

then when she’s satisfied

she’ll kill you

still in her embrace

and suck the blood from you.

 

I escaped my black widow

because she had too many males

in her web

and while she was embracing one

and then the other and then

another

I worked free

got out

to where I was before.

 

she’ll miss me—

not my love

but the taste of my blood,

but she’s good, she’ll find other

blood;

she’s so good that I almost miss my death,

but not quite;

I’ve escaped. I view the other

webs.

 

our marriage book, it

says.

I look through it.

they lasted ten years.

they were young once.

now I sleep in her bed.

he phones her:

“I want my drill back.

have it ready.

I’ll pick the children up at

ten.”

when he arrives he waits outside

the door.

his children leave with

him.

she comes back to bed

and I stretch a leg out

place it against hers.

I was young once too.

human relationships simply aren’t

durable.

I think back to the women in

my life.

they seem non-existent.

 

“did he get his drill?” I ask.

 

“yes, he got his drill.”

 

I wonder if I’ll ever have to come

back for my bermuda

shorts and my record album

by The Academy of St. Martin in the

Fields? I suppose I

will.

 

she’s from Texas and weighs

103 pounds

and stands before the

mirror combing oceans

of reddish hair

which falls all the way down

her back to her ass.

the hair is magic and shoots

sparks as I lay on the bed

and watch her combing her

hair. she’s like something

out of the movies but she’s

actually here. we make love

at least once a day and

she can make me laugh

any time she cares

to. Texas women are always

healthy, and besides that she’s

cleaned my refrigerator, my sink,

the bathroom, and she cooks and

feeds me healthy foods

and washes the dishes

too.

 

“Hank,” she told me,

holding up a can of grapefruit

juice, “this is the best of them

all.”

it says: Texas unsweetened

PINK grapefruit juice.

 

she looks like Katherine Hepburn

looked when she was

in high school, and I watch those

103 pounds

combing a yard and some change

of reddish hair

before the mirror

and I feel her inside of my

wrists and at the backs of my eyes,

and the toes and legs and belly

of me feel her and

the other part too,

and all of Los Angeles falls down

and weeps for joy,

the walls of the love parlors shake—

the ocean rushes in and she turns

to me and says, “damn this hair!”

and I say,

“yes.”

 

then there was the time in

New Orleans

I was living with a fat woman,

Marie, in the French Quarter

and I got very sick.

while she was at work

I got down on my knees

in the kitchen

that afternoon and

prayed. I was not a

religious man

but it was a very dark afternoon

and I prayed:

“Dear God: if you will let me live,

I promise You I’ll never take

another drink.”

I kneeled there and it was just like

a movie—

as I finished praying

the clouds parted and the sun came

through the curtains

and fell upon me.

then I got up and took a crap.

there was a big spider in Marie’s bathroom

but I crapped anyhow.

an hour later I began feeling much

better. I took a walk around the Quarter

and smiled at people.

I stopped at the grocery and got a couple of

6 packs for Marie.

I began feeling so good that an hour later

I sat in the kitchen and opened

one of the beers.

I drank that and then another one

and then I went in and

killed the spider.

when Marie got home from work

I gave her a big kiss,

then sat in the kitchen and talked

as she cooked dinner.

she asked me what had happened that day

and I told her I had killed the

spider. she didn’t get

angry. she was a good

sort.

 

I tried it standing up

this time.

it doesn’t usually

work.

this time it seemed

to…

 

she kept saying

“o my God, you’ve got

beautiful legs!”

 

it was all right

until she took her feet

off the ground

and wrapped her legs

around my middle.

 

“o my God, you’ve got

beautiful legs!”

 

she weighed about 138

pounds and hung there as I

worked.

 

it was when I climaxed

that I felt the pain

fly straight up my

spine.

 

I dropped her on the

couch and walked around

the room.

the pain remained.

 

“look,” I told her,

“you better go. I’ve got

to develop some film

in my dark room.”

 

she dressed and left

and I walked into the

kitchen for a glass of

water. I got a glass full

in my left hand.

the pain ran up behind my

ears and

I dropped the glass

which broke on the floor.

 

I got into a tub full of

hot water and epsom salts.

I just got stretched out

when the phone rang.

as I tried to straighten

my back

the pain extended to my

neck and arms.

I flopped about

gripped the sides of the tub

got out

with shots of green and yellow

and red light

flashing in my head.

 

the phone kept ringing.

I picked it up.

“hello?”

 

“I LOVE YOU!” she said.

 

“thanks,” I said.

 

“is that all you’ve got

to say?”

“yes.”

 

“eat shit!” she said and

hung up.

 

love dries up, I thought

as I walked back to the

bathroom, even faster

than sperm.

 

she writes: you’ll

be moaning and groaning

in your poems

about how I fucked

those 2 guys last week.

I know you.

she writes on to

say that my vibe

machine was right—

she had just fucked

a third guy

but she knows I don’t

want to hear who, why

or how. she closes her

letter, “Love.”

 

rats and roaches

have triumphed again.

here it comes running

with a slug in its

mouth, it’s singing

old love songs.

close the windows

moan

close the doors

groan.

 

I see you drinking at a fountain with tiny

blue hands, no, your hands are not tiny

they are small, and the fountain is in France

where you wrote me that last letter and

I answered and never heard from you again.

you used to write insane poems about

ANGELS AND GOD, all in upper case, and you

knew famous artists and most of them

were your lovers, and I wrote back, it’s all right,

go ahead, enter their lives, I’m not jealous

because we’ve never met. we got close once in

New Orleans, one half block, but never met, never

touched. so you went with the famous and wrote

about the famous, and, of course, what you found out

is that the famous are worried about

their fame—not the beautiful young girl in bed

with them, who gives them
that
, and then awakens

in the morning to write upper case poems about

ANGELS AND GOD. we know God is dead, they’ve told

us, but listening to you I wasn’t sure. maybe

it was the upper case. you were one of the

best female poets and I told the publishers,

editors, “print her, print her, she’s mad but she’s

magic. there’s no lie in her fire.” I loved you

like a man loves a woman he never touches, only

writes to, keeps little photographs of. I would have

loved you more if I had sat in a small room rolling a

cigarette and listened to you piss in the bathroom,

but that didn’t happen. your letters got sadder.

your lovers betrayed you. kid, I wrote back, all

lovers betray. it didn’t help. you said

you had a crying bench and it was by a bridge and

the bridge was over a river and you sat on the crying

bench every night and wept for the lovers who had

hurt and forgotten you. I wrote back but never

heard again. a friend wrote me of your suicide

3 or 4 months after it happened. if I had met you

I would probably have been unfair to you or you

to me. it was best like this.