The Roominghouse Madrigals (14 page)

 

these legs need to run

but I kneel

before female flowers

catch the scent of

forgetfulness

and grab it

sure

and evenings

hours of evenings

grey-headed evenings

nod

and afterwards

fall asleep.

 

 

justification of blood and rock is

justification of you

waiting in the doorway

 

 

justification of gun and club and pincers is

justification of you

spreading a tablecloth

 

 

the tree’s mathematics is the pounding dull leaves of

your eyes

 

 

my feet pushed into socks is an Arab crawling up to

kill

 

 

juice of christ in a pear is myself driving away

at 90 miles an hour

 

 

          and

 

 

the flak and the gruel and the words are riveted to the

walls

 

 

packaged like bombs to explode under my

enemies

 

 

and the evening comes down smiling and humming one

more dead tune

 

 

          and

 

 

it’s hooray: look out: wait:

starve and be covered by dirt until

life is tall and silver

again.

 

 

the birds are on fire

now

out there

and I walk across the room

and hold back the shade

and they are out there now

burning at

5:05 a.m.—darkness lifting like a

horse falling through sand. well,

I’ve got a blazer of whiskey left and

there are enough stretchers to carry the dead

but

not enough water to save the burning

birds: and
they
are telling me now:

          FLAME!           FLAME!

                                        FLAME!

as old trains move through the

desert

as the whores sleep with the job

done

as the schoolboys dream of laborless

love

          the birds BURN and

          die before me—

          they

fly away done

leaving the grass for what’s left of the

worms     what’s left of the worms

                what’s left of them

                for what’s left of me:

old tin song with lunatic tears:

 

 

                              which

 

 

is nothing new

except it’s different now

feeling so bad

they used to call it the blues

but it’s not so bad

whatever you call it

because at this time of light

say 5:36 a.m.

I still have a little whiskey left and

therefore a

chance.

 

 

and the sun wields mercy

but like a torch carried too high,

and the jets whip across its sight

and rockets leap like toads,

and the boys get out the maps

and pin-cushion the moon,

old green cheese,

no life there but too much on earth:

our unwashed India boys

crossing their legs, playing pipes,

starving with sucked-in bellies,

watching the snakes volute

like beautiful women in the hungry air;

the rockets leap,

the rockets leap like hares,

clearing clump and dog

replacing out-dated bullets;

the Chinese still carve

in jade, quietly stuffing rice

into their hunger, a hunger

a thousand years old,

their muddy rivers moving with fire

and song, barges, houseboats

pushed by the drifting poles

of waiting without wanting;

in Turkey they face the East

on their carpets

praying to a purple god

who smokes and laughs

and sticks his fingers in their eyes

blinding them, as gods will do;

but the rockets are ready: peace is no longer,

for some reason, precious;

madness drifts like lily pads

on a pond, circling senselessly;

the painters paint dipping

their reds and greens and yellows,

poets rhyme their loneliness,

musicians starve as always

and the novelists miss the mark,

but not the pelican, the gull;

pelicans dip and dive, rise,

shaking shocked half-dead

radioactive fish from their beaks;

indeed, indeed, the waters wash

the rocks with slime; and on Wall St.

the market staggers like a lost drunk

looking for his key; ah,

this will be a good one, by God:

it will take us back to the

snake, the limpet, or if we’re lucky,

the catalysis to the

sabre-teeth, the winged monkey

scrabbling in the pit over bits

of helmet, instrument and glass;

a lightning crashes across

the window and in a million rooms

lovers lie entwined and lost

and sick as peace;

the sky still breaks red and orange for the

painters—and for the lovers,

flowers open as they have always

opened but covered with the thin dust

of rocket fuel and mushrooms,

poison mushrooms; it’s a bad time,

a dog-sick time—curtain,

act III, standing room only,

SOLD OUT, SOLD OUT, SOLD OUT again,

by god, by somebody and something,

by rockets and generals and

leaders, by poets, doctors, comedians,

by manufacturers of soup

and biscuits, Janus-faced hucksters

of their own indexterity;

I can see now the coal-slick

contaminated fields, a snail or 2,

bile, obsidian, a fish or 3

in the shallows, an obloquy of our

source and our sight…

has this happened before? is history

a circle that catches itself by the tail,

a dream, a nightmare,

a general’s dream, a president’s dream,

a dictator’s dream…

can’t we awaken?

or are the forces of life greater than we?

can’t we awaken? must we forever,

dear friends, die in our sleep?

 

 

pinch-penny light, rifted, pitied light

like the drunken face of God in the sand,

smiling forgiveness…some old candle burning

in some old house

on the last night of earth,

house burning,

earth burning

in tears and poetry

scorching the filthy stars.

 

 

stalwart death, clean-up batter,

picking his nose and his victims,

old buddy, chewing stale bread,

always successful

as I listen to the crickets

while the master poets snore,

as I bring up the walls of China

in my poor brain

and walk them in wet dark

dropping lilies into ponds

calling to the dead

who have crawled away to hide;

while the master poets snore

I pay homage to bombs

the face of Baune turning to blood

with only the eyes holding still to the edge of sunset,

not wanting to go down…

 

 

now I cling evilly to these walls

and stand before a mirror

examining my content:

I represent rent, cheap labor

and nickle-coffee nights,

dancer in the splendid hock-shops

and rooms that close across the throat

as words fly from my small white hands

as the master poets snore…

 

 

are their birds more silken than mine?

perhaps, perhaps…it is so hard to deny!

what trick hikes their wings?

I tell you, no sparrow is more carved or

craving than mine…and yet

across my window

no voice answers, nothing responds;

I hear only the electric voices,

the shuffling of plates and lives,

on and on

these same simple dead sounds

enfolding me in their unchallenged weight,

while the master poets sing

and are praised,

and even fools love and are loved;

faith burns away:

I am a beggar hoisting lulled

sacked thoughts,

knowing I have the bolt to throw

but the catcher’s out of sight.

 

 

Beowulf may have killed Grendel and

Grendel’s mother

but he

couldn’t kill this

one:

it moves around with broken back and

eyes of spittle

has cancer

sweeps with a broom

smiles and kills

germs germans gladiolas

 

 

it sits in the bathtub

with a piece of soap and

reads the newspaper about the

Bomb and Vietnam and the freeways

and it smiles and then

gets out naked

doesn’t use a towel

goes outside

and rapes young girls

kills them and

throws them aside like

steakbone

 

 

it walks into a bedroom and watches

lovers fuck

it stops the clock at

1:30 a.m.

it turns a man into a rock while he

reads a book

 

 

the beast

spoils candy

causes mournful songs to be

created

makes birds stop

flying

 

 

it even killed Beowulf

the brave Beowulf who

had killed Grendel and Grendel’s

mother

 

 

look

even the whores at the bar

think about it

drink too much and

almost

forget business.

 

 

in some suburban cellar

a rat rises and tongues the leaky bottom of your life;

dreams of Cairo leave the body first,

such a November!—sweet pain tickling

like a fly, brushed off, it circles back

and settles again…

I will not lie: I hear the cackle of the grave

on nights that cannot be drunk away,

and it has rained all this same day

and buying my paper

I saw the drops falling

from the newsboy’s hat

to his nose

and then falling from his nose…

but I doubt he ever considered

cutting his throat,

ending a quick love.

Ramsey, says a voice on the phone,

Ramsey, you sound so damned sad!

downstairs a child draws circles in the mud,

it has stopped raining.

circles, circles

weep less, wonder less.

 

 

I hear a voice singing.

I open a window.

a dog barks.

in Amsterdam a holy man trembles.

 

 

pansies in a glass

this is sterile

sterile meaning

less trouble,

the arms of color

lifting

like cobras,

everything standing

around the glass

in the room.

I am thinking

of the

bee.