Mockingbird Wish Me Luck (6 page)

 

look, he said, I’ve written

300 poems in 2

months,

and he handed me the

stack and I

thought

oo oo.

a young girl

walked up

and handed him a plate of

corn and meat

in his cottage

by the beach

and the sea rolled in

and I turned the

white

pages.

I’ve been drinking

he said

and writing

and the young girl said

is there anything else

I can get

you?

he was rich and I was poor

and the sea rolled in

and I turned the

white

pages.

what do you think?

he asked?

and I said,

well, some of

these…

but I didn’t

finish.

later I walked

outside. I walked down

the sand to where the sand got

wet and I looked at the water and

the moon

and then I turned around

and I walked up to the

boardwalk and I thought,

oo oo.

 

 

queers do this

or is it that you’re

afraid to die?

biceps, triceps, forceps,

what are you going to do

with muscles?

well, muscles please the ladies

and keep the bullies

at bay—

so

what?

is it worth it?

is it worth the collected works

of Balzac?

or a 3 week vacation

in Spain?

or, is it another way of

suffering?

if you got paid to do it,

you’d hate it.

if a man got paid to make love,

he’d hate it.

 

 

still, one needs the

exercise—

this writing game:

only the brain and soul get

worked-out.

quit your bitching and

do it.

while other people are

sleeping

you’re lifting a mountain

with rivers of poems

running off.

 

 

my little famous bleeding elbows

my knotty knees (especially) and

even my balls

hairy and wasted.

these blue evenings of walking past buildings

where Jews pray beautifully about seasons I

know nothing of

and would leave me alone

with the roaches and ants climbing my dying body

in some place

too real to touch.

 

 

Americans don’t know what tragedy is—

a little 6.5 earthquake can set them to chattering

like monkeys—

a piece of chinaware broken,

the Union Rescue Mission falls down—

 

 

6 a.m.

they sit in their cars

they’re all driving around—

where are they going?

 

 

a little excitement has broken into their

canned lives

 

 

stranger stands next to stranger

chattering gibberish fear

anxious fear

anxious laughter…

 

 

my baby, my flowerpots, my ceiling

my bank account

 

 

this is just a tickler

a feather

and they can’t bear it…

 

 

suppose they bombed the city

as other cities have been bombed

not with an a-bomb

but with ordinary blockbusters

day after day,

every day

as has happened

in other cities of the world?

 

 

if the rest of the world could see you today

their laughter would bring the sun to its knees

and even the flowers would leap from the ground

like bulldogs

and chase you away to where you belong

wherever that is,

and who cares where it is

as long as it’s somewhere away from

here.

 

 

3 hour wait at the airport in

Chicago, surrounded by killers

I found a table alone

and had a scotch and water

when 4 preachers sat down,

and look here, said one of them,

looking at a newspaper,

here’s a guy drunk, ran through a

wall, killed one person, injured 4.

if I was him, said another,

I’d commit suicide.

I ordered a large beer

and sat there reading my own novel.

look here, said the one with the paper,

here’s a guy, no, two guys,

tried to hijack a liquor truck,

they were so dumb they didn’t even know

it was only carrying wine. didn’t even

break the seal. bound the driver

and then stopped for coffee. the driver

leaned on the horn and a cop car came by

and that was it. they went in and got

those 2 guys.

any 2 guys that dumb, said another,

they sure have it coming.

look sweetie, said another to the waitress,

we don’t want anything to drink, we don’t drink,

but we could sure use 4

coffees, and haven’t I seen you someplace before,

hee hee hee?

give me another beer, I told the

waitress. I drink, and I’ve never seen you anyplace

before.

the waitress came back with 4 cups of coffee

and the beer, and I sat there reading my own novel

as the 4 preachers sat there

whirling their spoons around their cups,

clink clink clink

and I thought, this isn’t a bad novel

this isn’t a bad novel

at all, but the next one is going to be

better, and I lifted my old beer and finished it,

and then drank some of the new

one, and clink clink clink

went the spoons against the cups

and one of the preachers coughed

and everybody was unhappy but

me.

 

 

driving through the park

I notice men and women playing golf

driving in their powered carts

over billiard table lawns,

they are my age

but their bodies are fat

their hair grey

their faces waffle batter,

and I remember being startled by my own face

scarred, and mean as red ants

looking at me from a department store mirror

and the eyes mad mad mad

I drive on and start singing

making up the sound

a war chant

and there is the sun

and the sun says, good, I know you,

and the steering wheel is humorous

and the dashboard laughs,

see, the whole sky knows

I have not lied to anything

even death will have exits

like a dark theatre.

I stop at a stop sign and

as fire burns the trees and the people and the city

I know that there will be a place to go

and a way to go

and nothing need ever be

lost.

 

spider on the wall:

why do you take

so long
?

 

the mockingbird had been following the cat

all summer

mocking mocking mocking

teasing and cocksure;

the cat crawled under rockers on porches

tail flashing

and said something angry to the mockingbird

which I didn’t understand.

 

 

yesterday the cat walked calmly up the driveway

with the mockingbird alive in its mouth,

wings fanned, beautiful wings fanned and flopping,

feathers parted like a woman’s legs,

and the bird was no longer mocking,

it was asking, it was praying

but the cat

striding down through centuries

would not listen.

 

 

I saw it crawl under a yellow car

with the bird

to bargain it to another place.

 

 

summer was over.

 

 

monkey feet

small and blue

walking toward you

as the back of a building falls off

and an airplane chews the white sky,

doom is like the handle of a pot,

it’s there,

know it,

have ice in your tea,

marry,

have children, visit your

dentist,

do not scream at night

even if you feel like screaming,

count ten

make love to your wife,

or if your wife isn’t there

if there isn’t anybody there

count 20,

get up and walk to the kitchen

if you have a kitchen

and sit there sweating

at 3 a.m. in the morning

monkey feet

small and blue

walking toward you.

 

 

someday the lion will

walk in

he’ll grab an arm

just above the elbow

my old arm

my wrinkled dice-shooting arm

and

I’ll scream

in my bedroom

I won’t understand at all

and he’ll be

too strong for me,

and people will walk in—

a wife, a girlfriend, a bastard son,

a stranger from down the street

and a

doctor

and

they will

watch

and the lion won’t bother them

yet,

and then my arm will be

gone

the doctor will put the

stethoscope to my chest

ask me to cough

then

he will turn to the others and

say

there’s a chance

but I think he’s going

under—shock and loss of

blood.

 

 

hell, I know that,

and now the lion has my

other arm

I try to knee him

his tail knocks a picture off the wall

a picture of a Dutch windmill and a

pond

 

 

it is a fine day

the world looks good

I feel I’d like to be

swimming or fishing or sleeping

under a tree

but the lion will not

let go

 

 

then

my other arm is

gone

 

 

the people kneel to

pray

all but the

doctor

 

 

the lion is clawing at my

chest

trying to get at the

heart

I ask the doctor to light me a

cigarette and

he does

 

 

then the

priest walks

in

 

 

the lion does not bother the priest

yet

 

 

I’d heard about the

lion

about how sometimes he was fast or sometimes he was

slow

 

 

I knew he usually preferred older people

although sometimes he even ate

babies or young men and

girls

 

 

god o mighty! save me! save me!

I scream

 

 

but the people do not

move

they let the lion

eat me

the priest mumbles incantations I do not

understand

the doctor turns his back and looks

out the window

 

 

it is the month of July

with the taste of butter in the air

and I am rapidly becoming a

keepsake thing

as before my eyes I see the

moth, butcherbird, dove, vulture and

angel

burning

 

 

the lion eats my heart

and the doctor puts the sheet over my

head

and it is early in the

morning

very early in the

morning

and decent people are still

in bed

most of them asleep with bad breath

and very few of them making

love

and most of them

not like me

yet