New Poems Book Three (11 page)

pretty boy was tiring

his punches were wild

his arms were weary

and the old wino closed in and

it became ugly,

pretty boy dropped to his knees

and the wino had him by the

throat

banging his head against the brick

wall,

pretty boy fell over

as the wino paused

landed a swift kick

to the gential area

then turned and walked back up

the dark alley

to where we stood watching.

we parted to let him

through

and he walked past us

turned

looked back

lit a cigarette

and then moved on.

when I got back in

she was raging:

“where the hell have you been?”

pink-eyed she was

sitting up against the pillows

just her slippers on.

“stop for a
quickie
?

no wonder you haven’t looked

at me for a week!”

“I saw a good fight. free.

better than anything at the

Olympic. I saw a good ass-

kicking alley fight.”

“you expect me to believe

that?”

“christ, don’t you ever wash

the glasses? well, we’ll use

these two.”

I poured two. she knocked hers

off. well, she needed it

and I needed mine.

“it was really brutal. I hate

to see such things but I can’t

help watching.”

“pour me another drink.”

I poured two more, she needed

hers because she lived with me.

I needed mine because I worked

as a stockroom boy

for the May Co.

“you stopped for a
quickie
!”

“no, I watched a fight.”

she tossed off her second drink.

she was trying to decide

whether I had had a quickie or

whether I had watched a fight.

“pour us another drink, is that

the only bottle we’ve got?”

I winked at her and pulled

another bottle from a paper sack.

we seldom ate. we drank

and I worked as a

stockroom boy for the May Co. and

she had a pair of the

most beautiful legs I had

ever seen.

as I poured the third drink

she got up, smiled, kicked off the

slippers and put her high heels

on.

“we need some god-damned

ice,” she said as I watched

her ass wobble into the

kitchen.

then she vanished in there

and I thought about that

fight again.

sometimes when you are in hell

and it is continuous

you get a bit giddy

and then when you are tired beyond being

tired

sometimes a crazy feeling gets a hold of

you.

the factory was in east L.A.

and of the 150 workers

I was one of only two white men

there.

the other had a soft job.

mine was to wrap and tape

the light fixtures

as they came off the assembly line and

as I tried

to keep pace the

sharp edges of the tape

cut through my gloves and into my

hands.

finally

the gloves had to be thrown

away

because

they were cut to shreds

and then my hands were completely exposed

each new slice like an electric

shock.

I was the big dumb white boy

and as the others

worked to keep pace

all eyes were watching to see

if I would

fall behind.

I gave up on my hands

but I didn’t give up.

the pace seemed impossible

and then something snapped in my

brain and I screamed

out the name of the firm we were all slaving

for, “
SUNBEAM
!”

at once

everybody laughed

all the girls on the assembly line and

all the guys too although

we all still had to struggle to keep up with

the work flow.

then I yelled it

again:

“
SUNBEAM
!”

it was a total release for me.

then one of the girls on the

assembly line yelled back,

“
SUNBEAM
!”

and we all

laughed

together.

and then as we continued

to work

a new voice

would suddenly call out from

somewhere,

“
SUNBEAM
!”

and each time we

laughed until

we were all drunk with

laughter.

then the foreman,

Morry,

came in from the other

room.

“
WHAT THE HELL’S GOING ON IN

HERE? THAT SCREAMING HAS GOT

TO STOP
!”

so then, we stopped.

and as Morry turned away we saw that the

seat of his pants was jammed up in the crack of

his ass, that fool in control of

our universe!

I lasted about 4 months there

and I will always remember that day,

that joy, the madness, the mutual

magic of our

many voices

one at a time

screaming

“
SUNBEAM
!”

sometimes when you are in

a living hell

long enough

things like that sometimes happen

and then

you’re in a kind of heaven

a heaven which might not seem to be

very much at all

to most folks

but which is good enough

especially when you can

watch someone like Morry

walk away with the seat of his pants

jammed up in the crack of his

ass.

I thought I saw the one with long

brown hair standing by the coffee stand.

she had on dark shades.

I ducked and got on the escalator

and went down to the first

floor and mingled with the

crowd.

a few days later

I thought I saw the redhead.

it looked like her ass from behind

and when her head turned I’m

almost sure it was her

face.

I quickly changed floors,

went all the way over to the

clubhouse.

it might all be my imagination

that I saw 2 of the women

that I once thought I couldn’t

live

without.

but

at least

I haven’t run into

the other

5.

every day on the freeway I get into a race with some

fool.

I win most of them.

but now and then I hook up with some fellow who is

totally insane

and then I

lose.

each day as I drive the freeway I think, not today, today

I am going to have an

easy pleasant

ride.

but somehow it happens and it’s always on the

Pasadena Freeway

with its snake-like curves which enhance the

danger and exhilaration.

these same curves make it almost impossible for the

police to

check your rate of speed

so they seldom cruise the

Pasadena Freeway.

here I am 65 years old

dueling with young boys

making reckless lane changes

charging into the tiniest gaps between moving

steel

the landscape roaring past in the

rain

sun

fog.

it takes an eye for split-second

timing

but there’s only so far

any of us

can go.

saw two writers sitting at a table in a café

the other day—not bad fellows really, either with

the word or the way.

it had been several years since I had last

seen them and as I walked over I noticed that they both

looked
old
—their faces sagged and one’s

hair was
white:

it would appear that the gentle art of poetry

had not treated them any better than working the

tomato fields, and oddly, when I greeted them,

they stammered and could barely respond,

they just sat there at the table like a

pair of old coots on a hot summer

afternoon.

I took my leave, went back to my table,

smiled at my wife, pleased that I hadn’t

grown old like that, no,

not at all.

I enjoyed the view of the harbor as I looked out at the

brightly painted ships docked there, rising and falling

gently with the tide

and as I raised my glass to toast my eternal

youth

the voice across from me said, “Hank, you

better take it easy, in just another week

you’re going to be

65.”

Popcorn Man, he don’t give a damn,

hates his brother, beats his mother,

he don’t give a damn,

Popcorn Man.

Popcorn Man, he don’t have a

conscience, he don’t wear a rubber,

hates his mother, beats his brother,

Popcorn Man.

Popcorn Man,

he’ll wipe your ass with a frying pan,

Popcorn Man,

he’ll steal your arms, burn your

meat, suck out your eyeballs as a

Popcorn treat,

Popcorn Man.

he don’t give a damn,

he don’t give a damn,

that Popcorn Man,

he really don’t give a damn,

that Popcorn Man.

today was Mozart’s 237th birthday

as tonight the sounds from the harbor

drift in over my little

balcony.

I suck the world in through this cigar,

then blow it out.

I’m calm, I’m tired, I’m calm and

tired.

Mozart, what do you think?

why do the gods tease us as

we approach the final

darkness?

yet, who’d want to stay here

FOREVER
?

a day at a time is difficult

enough.

so I guess everything is all right.

anyway, happy

237th birthday.

and many more.

I’d like to treat you to

a fine dinner tonight

but the other people

at all the other tables

wouldn’t

understand.

they never

have.

Barney, you knew right away

when they halved the

apple

that your part would contain the

worm.

you knew you’d never dream of conquistadors or

swans.

each man has his designated place and yours is at

the end of the line,

a long long line,

an almost endless line

in the worst possible weather.

you’ll never be embraced by a lovely lady

and your place in the scheme of things

will go unrecorded.

there are men put on earth not to live but to die

slowly and badly or

quickly and

uselessly.

the latter are the lucky ones.

Barney, I don’t know what to say.

it’s the way

things work.

it’s pure chance.

you were born unlucky and unloved,

tossed into a boiling cauldron.

you will be as soon

forgotten as last week’s dream.

Barney, fair doesn’t matter.

every heroic effort fails.

Barney, you have a billion names

and as many faces.

you’re not alone.

just look

around.

to feign real emotion, yours or the world’s,

is, of course, unforgivable

yet many poets

past and present

are adept at

this.

these are poets

who write what I call the

“comfortable, clever poem.”

these poems are sometimes written by professors

of literature who have been on the job for too

long,

by the overly ambitious,

by young students of the game

or the like.

but I too am guilty:

last night I wrote 5 comfortable, clever

poems.

and if you aren’t a professor of literature,

overly ambitious,

a young student of the game

or the like,

this can also be caused by too much

success with your writing,

or even be the result of a life gone

cozy.

to make matters worse, I mailed out

those 5 comfortable, clever poems

and I wouldn’t be surprised if

3 or 4 of them were accepted for

publication.

none of this has anything to do with

real emotion and guts,

it’s just word-slinging for the sake of

it

and it’s done almost everywhere by

almost

everybody

we forget what we are really about

and the more we forget this

the less we are able to write a

poem that

stands and screams and laughs on

the page.

we just become like the many writers who make

poetry magazines so dull and

unreadable and

pretentious.

we might just as well not write at all

because we’ve become

fakes, cheaters, poem-hustlers.

so look for us in the next issue of

Poetry: A Magazine of Verse
,

look for us in the table of contents,

turn to any of our precious poems

and yawn your life

away.

very few go there every day,

it’s hard to beat the 18% take here in California.

I’ve not only been there every day, I’ve been

there every day for decades.

I’ve been there for so long that I know

many jocks’ agents and trainers.

we talk

at the track or on the phone.

and they’ve been over to my place.

none of them are very good horseplayers

compared to me.

there are some other sad players out there.

they come day after day and lose and lose.

where they get their money, I don’t know.

their clothing is old, dirty, ill-fitting, their shoes

run down.

they lose and lose and lose

and finally vanish

to be replaced by a host of new losers.

but I am a fixture.

I will come in the worst weather, the rain

falling in one gray sheet of water,

I will pull into the parking lot, my wipers working hard.

the attendants know me.

“another lousy fucking day, huh Hank?”

it’s a bore between races, they

make you wait too long, they suck the life

out of you.

you lose 25 or 30 minutes between

races, time you’ll never get back,

it’s gone, it’s gone, it’s gone.

most races are 6 furlongs, which means

the real action lasts somewhere between

a minute and 9 or ten seconds.

but when your horse is closing on the

wire, that’s a feeling hard to

compare.

people need a continual war of sorts, some action, the

buzz
.

that’s when

you come alive for a moment!

some get it at the track.

some get it in other ways.

many others seldom get it.

you’ve got to have it now and then,

you’ve got to.

a shot of fire!

an explosion!

after a photo finish

your horse’s number going up

first

on the tote board!

it’s the roar of the impossible.

it’s as stunning as the opening of a flower.

and you standing there, feeling

that.