The Roominghouse Madrigals (10 page)

 

I have lain in bed all day

but I have written one poem

and I am up now

looking out the window

and like a novelist might say

drunk
: the clouds are coming at me

like scullery maids with dishpans

in their hands—

something that holds gritty dirty

water.

but I am a drunken non-novelist

but in clear condition now

here sits the bottle of beer

and I am warmly thinking

in a kind of foam-shaped idle fancy

working closely

but all I can stoke up are

squares and circles which

do not fit; so

messeigneurs

I will tell you the truth:

again (in bed)

I read another article on D. Thomas &

some day I will get lucky and sit around

and own a French horn and a tame eagle

and I will sit on the porch all day

a white porch always in the sun

one of those white porches with green

vines all around, and

I will
read
about Dylan and D.H. until

my eyes fall out of my head for eagle

meat and I will play the French horn

blind. but even now it gets darker

the evening thing into night

the bones down here

the stars up there

somebody rattling the springs in

Denver so another pewker can be born.

I think everything is a sheet of sun

and the best of everything

is myself walking through it

wondering about the pure
nerve

of the life-thing going on:

after the jails the hospitals

the factories the good dogs

the brainless butterflies.

but now I am back at the window

there is an opera on the radio

and a woman sits in a chair to my left

saying over and over again:

BRATCH BRATSHT BRAATCHT!

and she is holding a book in her hand:

How to Learn Russian Easily
.

but there is really nothing you can do

easily: live or die or accept fame

or money or defeat, it’s all hard.

the opera says this, the dead birds

the dead countries the dead loves

the man shot because somebody thought

he was an elk

the elk shot because somebody thought

it was an elk.

all the pure
nerve
of going on

this woman wanting to speak Russian

myself wanting to get drunk

but we need something to eat.

GRIND CAT GRIND MEAT says

the woman in Russian so I figure

she’s hungry, we haven’t eaten

in a couple of hours. CLAM

BAYONET TURKEY PORK

AND PORK she says, and I walk

over and put on my pants and

I am going out to get something.

the forests are far away and I am

no good with the bow and arrow

and somebody sings on the radio:

“
farewell, foolish objects
.”

and all I can do is walk into a grocery

store and pull out a wallet and hope

that it’s loaded. and this is

about how I waste my Sundays.

the rest of the week gets better

because there is somebody telling

me what to do

and although it seems madness

almost everybody is doing it

whatever it is.

so now if you will excuse me

(she is eating an orange now)

I will put on my shoes and shirt

and get out of here—it’ll

be better for

all of us.

 

 

I am a panther shut up and bellowing in

cement walls, and I am angry at blue

evenings without ventilation

and I am angry with you, and it will come

            like a rose

it will come like a man walking through fire

it will shine like an unseen trumpet in a trunk

the eyes will smell like sausages

the feet will have small propellers

and I will hold you in Bayonne and

the sailors will smile

my heart like something cut away from

cancer will feel and beat again feel

and beat again—but now

the blue evening is cinched like old

muskets and the dangling sex rope hangs

as the tree stands up and calls:

July
. the dust of hope in the bottom of paper cups

along with small spiders that have names like ancient

European cities; spit and dross, heavy wheels;

oilwells stuck between fish and sucking up the grey gas

of love and the palms up on the cliff waving

waving in the warm yellow light

as I walk into a drugstore to buy toothpaste,

rubbers, photographs of frogs, a copy of the latest

Consumer Reports
(50 cents) for I consume and

am consumed and would like to know

on this blue evening

just which razorblade it would be best for me

to use, or maybe I could get a station wagon or buy a

stereo or a movie camera, say 8mm, under $55

or an electric frying pan…like the silver head

of some god-thing after they drop the bomb
BANG

and the grass gives up and love is a shadow

and love is a fishtail weaving through

threads that seem eyes but are only what’s

left of me on the last blue evening after the bands

have suicided out, the carnival has left town and

they’ve blown up the Y.W.C.A. like a giant balloon and

sent it out to sea full of screaming lovely lonely

girls.

 

 

Now it’s Borodin…4:18 a.m.,

symphony #2,

the gas is on

but the masses still sleep

except the bastard

downstairs

who always has the light on

all night, he yawns all night

and sleeps all day,

he’s either a madman

or a poet; and has an

ugly wife,

neither of them work

and we pass each other

on the steps (the wife and I)

when we go down

to dump our bottles,

and I look at his name

on the mailbox:
Fleg

God.
No wonder
. A fleg

never
sleeps. Some kind

of fish-thing waiting

for a twist in the sky.

but very kind, I must

remember, when the

drunk women up here

scream or throw things

Fleg ignores it all,

yawns, and this is

fine. There used to be

an
Anderson
, a
Chester

Anderson
always at my door

in his pants

and undershirt,

red-eyed as a woman

who has lost a lover,

manager behind his shoulder

(and one night 2 cops),

“God, I can’t
sleep
.

I’m a
working
man,

I’ve got to get my
sleep

Jesus. I can’t SLEEP.”

 

 

Fleg?
Sleep
? I’ve never even

seen
him. I don’t think

he does
anything
. Just some

kind of shoulder of mutton

with silver eyes

looking up at his ceiling,

 

 

tiredly smiling,

saying softly to his

ugly wife: “That
Bukowski

up there, he’s a kick

for sore balls, ain’t he?”

 

 

“Now, Honey, don’t talk that way.”

 

 

“He had a colored woman up there

the other night. I can tell,

I can tell.”

 

 

“Now, Mission, you can’t tell no

such damn thing.”

 

 

(
Mission? Mission Fleg
. Christ.)

 

 

“Yes, I can. I heard her screaming.”

 

 

“Screaming?”

 

 

“Well, moaning, kind of like you

know. What’s this guy look like,

baby?”

“Passed him today. Face kind of smashed

in. A long nose like an ant-eater.

Mouth like a monkey. Kind of funny eyes.

Never saw eyes like those.”

 

 

It’s about 4:38 a.m. Borodin is finished (yeah)

not a very long symphony. I turn my radio down

and the Flegs I find

are listening

to the same station.

 

 

I hope we never meet,

I like Fleg the way he is

(in my mind)

and I’m sure he wants me

the way I am

(in his mind),

and he has just yawned now

up through the ceiling

his ceiling

which is my floor; ah,

my
poor tired
Fleg

waiting for me to give

him LIFE;

he’s probably slowly dying of

something

and I am too,

but I’m so glad

he doesn’t call the police

while I’m

at it.

 

this South American up here on a Gugg

walked in with his whore

and she sat on the edge of my bed and

crossed her fine legs

and I kept looking at her legs

and he pulled at his stringy necktie

and I had a hangover

and he asked me

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE AMERICAN

POETS?

and I told him I didn’t think very much

of the American poets

and then he went on to ask some other

very dull questions

(as his whore’s legs layed along the side of

my brain) like

WELL? YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT ANYTHING

BUT IF YOU WERE TEACHING A CLASS AND ONE OF THE

STUDENTS ASKED YOU WHICH AMERICAN POETS

THEY SHOULD READ

WHAT WOULD YOU TELL THEM?

she crossed her legs as I watched and I thought

I could knock him out with one punch

rape her in 4 minutes

catch a train for L.A.

get off in Arizona and walk off into the desert

and I couldn’t tell him that I would never teach

a class

that along with not liking American poetry

that I didn’t like American classes either

or the job that they would expect me to

do,

so I said

Whitman, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence’s poems about

reptiles and beasts, Auden. and then I

realized that Whitman was the only true American,

that Eliot was not an American somehow and the

others certainly not, and

he knew it too

he knew that I had fucked up

but I made no apologies

thought some more about rape

I almost loved the woman but I knew that when she walked out

that I would never see her again

and we shook hands and the Gugg said

he’d send me the article when it came out

but I knew that he didn’t have an article

and he knew it too

and then he said

I will send you some of my poems translated into

English

and I said fine

and I watched them walk out of the place

I watched her highheels clack down the tall

green steps

and then both of them were gone

but I kept remembering her dress sliding all over her

like a second skin

and I was wild with mourning and love and sadness

and being a fool unable to

communicate

anything

and I walked in and finished that beer

cracked another

put on my ragged king’s coat

and walked out into the New Orleans street

and that very night

I sat with my friends and acted vile and

the ass

much mouth and villainy

and cruelness

and they never

knew why.

 

I take the taxi to Newport and study the wrinkles in the

driver’s skull; all anticipation is gone:

defeat has come so often

(like rain)

that it has assumed more meaning

than victory; the player is good at

the piano

and we wait in a corner

(this poet!)

waiting to recite

poems; it’s like a cave here:

full of bats and whores

and bodiless music

moving at the back of the world; my head aches,

and seeking a deliberate door

I think gently of successful papa Haydn

rotting in the rainy garden

above copulating

tone-deaf gophers…

 

 

the sun is in a box somewhere

asleep like a cat;

            the bats flit, a body

takes my hand (the one with the drink:

the right hand is the drinker)

      a woman, a horrible

      damned woman,

      something alive

      sits

      and blinks

      at me:

Hank, it says,

they want you up

      front!

fuck ’em, I say, fuck ’em.

I have grown quite fat and

vulgar (a deliberate death

on the kitchen floor) and

suddenly I laugh

at my excellent condition

like some swine of a businessman

and I don’t even feel

like getting up

to piss…

 

 

      Angels,

we have grown apart.