New Poems Book Three (12 page)

every now and then

towards 3 a.m.

and well into the second

bottle

a poem will arrive

and I’ll read it

and immediately attach to it

that dirty word—

immortal.

well, we all know that

in this world now

that

immortality can be a very

brief experience

or

in the long run:

non-existent.

still, it’s nice to play with

dreams of

immortality

and I set the poem aside in a

special place

and

go on with the

others

—to find that poem again

in the morning

read it

and

without hesitation

tear it

up.

it

was nowhere near

immortal

then

or

now

—just a drunken piece

of

sentimental

trash.

the best thing about self-rejection

is that it

saves that obnoxious duty

from being

somebody else’s

problem.

did I fail those fragile tulips?

I think back over my checkered past

remembering all the ladies I’ve known who

at the beginning of the affair

were already discouraged and unhappy

because of their miserable

previous experiences with other

men.

I was considered just another

stop along the way

and maybe I

was and maybe I wasn’t.

the ladies had long been used and misused

while undoubtedly adding their share of

abuse to the

mix.

they were always

chary at first

and the affairs were much like reading an

old newspaper over and over

again (the obituary or help-wanted

sections)

or it was like listening to a familiar

song

too often recalled and sung again

until the melody and words became

blurred.

their real needs were obscured by their

fears

and I always arrived too late with too

little.

yet sometimes there were moments

however brief

when kindness and laughter

came breaking

through

only to quickly dissolve into the

same inevitable dark

despair.

did I fail those fragile tulips?

I can’t think of any one of those ladies

I’d rather not have known

no matter what stories they tell of me

now

as they edge again into

the lives of new-found

lovers.

I keep meeting people, I am introduced to

them at various gatherings

and

either sooner or later

I am told smugly that

this lady or

that gentleman

(all of them young and fresh of face,

essentially untouched by life)

has given up drinking;

that

they all have

had a very difficult time

of late

but

NOW

(and

the
NOW

is what irritates me)

all of them are pleased and proud

to have finally

overcome all that alcoholic

nonsense.

I could puke on their feeble

victory. I started drinking at the age of

eleven

after I discovered a wine cellar

in the basement of a boyhood

friend

and

since then

I have done jail time on 15 or

20 occasions,

had 4 D.U.I.’s,

have lost 20 or 30 terrible

jobs,

have been battered and left for

dead in several skid row

alleys, have been twice

hospitalized and

have experienced numberless wild and

suicidal

adventures.

I have been drinking, with

gusto, for 54 years and intend to

continue to

do so.

and now I am introduced

to these young,

blithe, slender, unscathed,

delicate creatures

who

claim to have vanquished the

dreaded evil of

drink!

what is true, of course, is

that they have never really experienced

anything—they have just

dabbled and they have just

dipped in a toe, they have only

pretended to really drink.

with them, it’s like saying that

they have escaped hell-fire by blowing out

a candle.

it takes real effort

and many years to get damn good

at anything

even being a drunk,

and once more

I’ve never met one of these reformed young drunks

yet

who was any better for being

sober.

we tried to hide it in the house so that the

neighbors wouldn’t see.

it was difficult, sometimes we both had to

be gone at once and when we returned

there would be excreta and urine all

about.

it wouldn’t toilet train

but it had the bluest eyes you ever

saw

and it ate everything we did

and we often watched tv together.

one evening we came home and it was

gone.

there was blood on the floor,

there was a trail of blood.

I followed it outside and into the garden

and there in the brush it was,

mutilated.

there was a sign hung about its severed

throat:

“we don’t want things like this in our

neighborhood.”

I walked to the garage for the shovel.

I told my wife, “don’t come out here.”

then I walked back with the shovel and

began digging.

I sensed

the faces watching me from behind

drawn blinds.

they had their neighborhood back,

a nice quiet neighborhood with green

lawns, palm trees, circular driveways, children,

churches, a supermarket, etc.

I dug into the earth.

Dylan Thomas, of course, loved it all: the applause, the

free booze, the receptive ladies, but it was

all too much for him

and he finally wrote less than

one hundred poems—

but he could recite almost every one

of them

beautifully

from memory

and whether to recite or drink or copulate

soon became his only

concern.

sucker-punched by his own vanity

and the accolades of fools,

he pissed on the centuries

and they

pissed

back

all over

him.

things never get so bad

that we can’t remember

that maybe they were

never so good.

we swam upstream

through all those rivers of

shit—

no use drowning

now

and

wasting all that

gallant and stupid

fight.

upstream through it all

to end up

sitting here

in front of this machine

with

cigarette dangling

and

drink at hand.

no glory more than this

doing what has to be done

in this small

room

just to stay alive and to

type these words with

no net below

3 million readers holding their breath

as I stop

reach around

and scratch my

right

ear.

some individuals have an excessive

fear of death they say that Tolstoy was

one such

but that he worked it out

by finding Christ.

whatever works,

works.

it’s not really necessary

to tremble in the gloom among

flickering wax candles.

in general, most people don’t

think too much about

death,

they are too busy fighting

day to day

for

survival.

when death comes

it’s not so hard for them—

weary and worn as they are—

so they just toss it in,

leave

almost as if on a

vacation.

to go on

living is so much

harder.

most, given a choice

between eternal life or

death,

will always choose

the latter.

which proves

that

most people are

much wiser

than we

know.

yes, 1 know there
should
be a

God.

I remember that

during World War II there was a

saying: “there are no atheists in

foxholes.”

of course, there were, but I

suppose not very

many.

yet

the fear of death

does not always

compel everyone into accepting a blind

commonly-held

belief.

for those few atheists

in foxholes perhaps god and

the war both

held very little real

meaning

no matter what

the majority

demanded.

sitting here looking at the small wooden gargoyle sitting on my

desk, it’s a chilly night but the endless rains have stopped

and I am suspended somewhere between Nirvana

and nowhere, realizing that I’ve thought too much

about fate and death and not enough about something sensible,

like putting some polish on my old shoes. I need more

sleep but I have this horrible habit of sitting

up here until dawn, listening to the sirens and the other

sounds of the night; I should have been one of

those old guys sitting in a watchtower looking out

to sea.

the gargoyle, which looks something like myself, seems

to say, “you got that right, Henry.”

this town is drying out, the drunks in

the bars are talking about the endless rain, about what

happened to them in the rain, they are full of

rain stories.

and now the new president is going to be

inaugurated and he’s so damn young I could

be his grandfather, still, he doesn’t seem a bad

chap but he’s sure inherited a fucking mess.

well, we’ll see about him and about me and finally

about you.

and what about you, little gargoyle, looking at me.

it’s only January but you’ll be surprised at

the hells and joys that await us,

how we are both going to have to

endure the bad parts and the galling but

necessary trivial things: a man can

damn near perish for failure to pay a gas

bill, get a tooth pulled or replace a leaking

valve stem on a tire.

there’s so much crap to be attended to, like it

or not.

some just give it all up and go wild

in some corner;

I don’t have the guts for that—yet.

ah, gargoyle, it’s such a puzzle, you’d think

there’d be more flash, more lightning, more

miracle but if there is, we are going to have

to create it ourselves, me, you, others.

meanwhile, as I said, the whole town is

drying out and that’s about all we can hope for

at the moment.

but we are girding up, pumping our spiritual

muscles, waiting here in the dream.

that’s better than not waiting at all, that’s better

than tossing it in.

“you got that right, Henry,” the gargoyle seems to say.

I get a chill, put on a large black sweater,

sit here, wiggle my toes.

there is something beautiful about this room.

sometimes it’s just so perfect, being

alive,

sometimes,

especially while watching a small wooden gargoyle hold

up its oversized head and stick out its tongue while

half

laughing

now.

why do we kill all those christmas trees just

to celebrate one birthday?

I have this new room where I sit alone and it’s much like all

the rooms of my past—old mail and papers, candy wrappers, combs, magazines,

old newspapers and other accumulated trash is scattered about.

my disorder was never chosen, it just arrived and then it

stayed.

there’s never enough time to get things

right—there are always breakdowns, losses, the hard mathematics of

confusion and

disarray.

we are harrangued by these trivial tasks

and then there are those other days when it becomes

impossible even to pay a gas bill, to answer threats from

the IRS or call the termite man.

I have this new room up here but my problem is the same as always: my

lifelong failure to live peacefully with either the female or the

universe, it all gets so painful, all so raw with self-abuse,

attrition, re-

morse.

I have this new room up here but I’ve lived in similar rooms in many

cities. now with the years shot suddenly away, I still sit as determined as ever,

feeling no different than I did in my youth.

the rooms always were—still are—best at night: the yellow glow of

the electric light while thinking and writing. all I’ve ever needed

was a simple retreat from the galling nonsense of the world.

I could always handle the worst if I was sometimes allowed

the briefest respite from the nightmare,

and the gods, so far, have allowed me

that.

I have this new room up here and I sit alone in this floating, smoky, crazy

space, I am content in this killing field, and my friends, the walls

embrace me anew.

my heart can’t laugh but sometimes it smiles

in the yellow light: to have come this far to

sit alone

again

in this new room up here.