The Roominghouse Madrigals (16 page)

 

I have refused the discipline

of Art and Government and

God and all that which

destroys my seeming

and lifting my beer now

frothy

in the golden afternoon

light

I have it:

plateaus of softness, wire

leaves, spirit of the sidewalks

walls that weep like old paintings

everything real, not bent,

and as a brown sparrow

drops across my window’s sight

and the planes graze Africa again

in fire-lit nightmare

I have all I need on this tablecloth:

sunflower seeds, can opener

razor, 2 pencils, bent paper clip

memory of sparrow, angular sidewalk—

this under my fingers

myself myself myself.

 

 

they get up on their garage roof

both of them 80 or 90 years old

standing on the slant

she wanting to fall really

all the way

but hacking at the old roofing

with a hoe

 

 

and he

more coward

on his knees praying for more days

gluing chunks of tar

his ear listening

for more green rain

more green rain

and he says

mama be careful

 

 

and she says nothing

and hacks a hole

where a tulip

never grew.

 

 

no more stalling,

the war torch is lit

and all over the neighborhood

men rattle in their irons,

flares kite the sky

somebody rushes past,

a confused cock crows

and I strike up

a cigarette.

 

 

it is difficult to decide

where the enemy is:

 

 

I go inside

to wife and hound

both fat and soft

as peaches

under the

sun.

 

 

I shave by candlefat and lightning,

I shave by their holy silence

in a shattered mirror.

 

 

I put on my hat

and hug them both

like two jellychildren

lost in smoke;

then outside I go,

searching the West

(dim and hilly

I’m told)

with bright

mean eyes.

 

 

You smoke a cigarette in fury and fall into

neutral slumber, to awaken to a dawn of

windows and grieving, without trumpets; and

somewhere, say, is a fish—all eye and movement—

wiggling in water; you could be that

fish, you could be there, held in water,

you could be the eye, cool and hung,

non-human; put on your shoes, put on

your pants, boy; not a chance, boy—

the fury of the absent air, the scorn of those alike

as dead violets; scream, scream, scream

like a trumpet, put on your shirt, your

tie, boy: grieve is a pretty word like

mandolin, and strange like artichoke; grieve is

a word and grieve is a way; open the door,

boy; go away.

 

 

Go to Tibet.

Ride a camel.

Read the bible.

Dye your shoes blue.

Grow a beard.

Circle the world in a paper canoe.

Subscribe to
The Saturday Evening Post
.

Chew on the left side of your mouth only.

Marry a woman with one leg and shave with a

          straight razor.

And carve your name in her arm.

 

 

Brush your teeth with gasoline.

Sleep all day and climb trees at night.

Be a monk and drink buckshot and beer.

Hold your head under water and play the violin.

Do a belly dance before pink candles.

Kill your dog.

Run for Mayor.

Live in a barrel.

Break your head with a hatchet.

Plant tulips in the rain.

 

 

But don’t write poetry.

 

 

the dead do not need

aspirin or

sorrow,

I suppose.

 

 

but they might need

rain.

 

 

not shoes

but a place to

walk.

 

 

not cigarettes,

they tell us,

but a place to

burn.

 

 

or we’re told:

space and a place to

fly

might be the

same.

 

 

the dead don’t need

me.

 

 

nor do the

living.

 

 

but the dead might need

each

other.

 

 

in fact, the dead might need

everything we

need

and

we need so much,

if we only knew.

what it

was.

 

 

it is

probably

everything

 

 

and we will all

probably die

trying to get

it

 

 

or die

 

 

because we

don’t get

it.

 

 

I hope

you will understand

when I am dead

 

 

I got

as much

as

possible.

 

 

fucker, you might at least send me a couple of your

books

I don’t read anymore unless

I get them free

you write a good letter but then

a lot of them write good

letters

but when it comes to writing the poem

they dry up and die like a

wax museum.

 

 

and, baby, I see you’ve been around:

Evergreen Review, Poetry
etc.

I cannot

make these golden outhouses of

culture and have long since

given up.

 

 

I will never have a house in the valley with

little stone men to water my

lawn.

 

 

as I get older

(and I am getting older)

I can look at a green gardenhouse

(not mine)

for hours or I can look at

these swinging elephant ears outside the

window

they are caught between the wind and me and

the sinking sun

and the sea is 20 miles west and

I have not seen the sea for maybe 3

years and

maybe it’s not there anymore and maybe I’m

not here, anymore.

 

 

and the only time I begin to feel

is when I drink the yellow beer down so fast and so

long that the electric light bulb glows like the

sun and my woman looks like a highschool girl with

schoolbooks and

there is not a dent in the world and

Pound has shaved and

the bulldog smiles.

 

 

now,

for a cigarette. cancer and I

have an understanding like a

whore paid for. I haven’t been to a

charity ward and been slugged to my knees for some

time

all the stale blood everywhere like

puke

and I keep thinking that there have been men who

died for something or

thought they did

and so

there’s this sense of waste

just dying for yourself with

nobody around

not even a nurse

just

this

old man of 80

yelling at you down on the floor while you are

hemorrhaging,

yelling from his bed:

          “shut up! I want to SLEEP!”

 

 

well, he’ll get his

sleep.

 

 

the chain is on the door

the naked women shut out

the naked power on as I

bend over turbine-powered

sun-powered jets

knowing that I am not very good at

going on—

I’d rather watch a beetle crawl the sick

powdered dust of

earth—

while you are aware of my

cold handshake and

my cigar more alive than my

eyes, my

wit dimmer than

last Fall’s sunlight.

but, Christ, friends—

the luger, the mortar, the patchwork

as I gape out at you from a

porkchop mouth—

take me as Caesar was taken

or

Joan of Arc

or

the man who fell off the fire escape drunk

or

the suicide at Bellevue

or Van Gogh confused with

ravens

and the atomic yellow.

 

 

I hold everything away from myself

so that you may become

real and shaking and stemmed

and ascending and blue and buttermilk

as the chorus girls kick out,

flags wave,

the eagle sinks into the sea,

as

our dirty time is just about

served and done.

 

 

grief-tailed fish,

Sunday-eye in walking shorts

with staff,

motorcades in honor of the roots

of trees,

the rain like a young girl

walking toward me,

the houses waving like flags

filled with drunken hymns,

the bulls of Spain

the bulls of Spain

winning

unpracticed as leaves

as alone as shrimp upon a sea-bottom

or if this is wrong

as alone as what is there,

as my love

an old woman with rouged cheeks

skips rope again

as Hemingway’s fingers live again

tough and terrible and good,

as Kid Gavilan once again flurries

like hyacinths into Spring,

I am sad I am sad I am sad

that the tongue and teeth will eat us

must choose so many good

like these fingers of lilies into the brain

sock out light

to those of us who sit in dark rooms alone

on Monday mornings

while presidents speak of honor and culture

and dedication;

or orange moon of moaning

that my voice speaks like slivers through a broken

face,

all this time I’ve seen through the bottoms of bottles

and black oil wells pumping their stinking arms

ramming home to the core of a rose

split into shares split into dividends

that tinkle less than the grunt of a frog,

I am hammered home not upon wisdom

but upon defamation:

old cars in junk yards,

old men playing checkers in the park,

women putting a price upon the curve of leg and breast,

men going to education like a bank account

or a high-priced whore to accompany them to a symphony,

one-third of the world starving while

I am indecent enough to worry about my own death

like some monkey engrossed with his flea,

I am sad because my manliness chokes me down

to the nakedness of revulsion

when there is so little time to understand,

I am sad because my drink is running low

and I must either visit people who drink

or go to storekeepers

with a poem they will never print,

strings of an avant-garde symphony

upon my radio,

somebody driving a knife through the everywhere cotton

but only meaning

that he protests dying,

and I have seen the dead

like figs upon a board

and my heart gone bad

breaking from the brain and reason

left with only

the season of

love

and

the question:

why
?

that Wagner is dead say

is bad enough

to me

only

or that Van Gogh

does not see the strings and puddles

of this day,

this is not so good,

or the fact that

those I have known to touch

I am no longer able to touch;

I am a madman who sits in the front row

of burlesque shows and musical comedies

sucking up the light and song and dance

like a child

upon the straw of an icecream soda,

but I walk outside

and the heinous men

the steel men

who believe in the privacy of a wallet

and cement

and chosen occasions only

Christmas New Year’s the 4th of July

to attempt to manifest a life

that has lain in a drawer like a single glove

that is brought out like a fist:

too much and too late.

I have seen men in North Carolina mountains

posing as priests when they had not even

become men yet

and I have seen men in odd places

like bars and jails

good men who posed nothing

because they knew that posing was false

that the blackbird the carnation the dollar bill in the palm

the poem for rested people with 30 dollar curtains plus

time for flat and meaningless puzzles,

they knew the poem the knife

the curving blueing cock of Summer

that all the love that hands could hold

would go would go

and that the needs for knicknacks and gestures

was done

o fire hold me in these rooms

o copper kettle boil,

the small dogs run the streets,

carpenters sneeze,

the barber’s pole itches

to melt in the sun,

come o kind wind of black car

as I cross Normandy Avenue

in a sun gone blue

like ruptured filaments of a battered suitcase,

to see where you are to see where you have gone

I enter the store of a knowing Jew, my friend,

and argue for another bottle

for him

and

for me

for

    all

        of

            us.