The Roominghouse Madrigals (21 page)

 

practically speaking

the great words of great men

are not so great.

 

 

nor do great nations nor great beauties

leave anything but the residue

of reputation to be slowly

gnawed away.

 

 

nor do great wars seem so great,

nor great poems

nor first-hand legends.

 

 

even the sad deaths

are not now so sad,

and failure was nothing but a

trick

to keep us going,

 

 

and fame and love

a trick to dull our bleeding.

 

 

and as fire becomes ash and steel

becomes rust, we become

wise

and then

not so wise.

 

 

and we sit in chairs

reading old maps,

wars done, loves done, lives done,

 

 

and a child plays before us like a monkey

and we tap our pipe and yawn,

close our eyes and sleep.

 

 

pretty words

like pretty ladies,

wrinkle up and die.

 

 

rose, rose

bark for me

 

 

all these centuries in the sun

you have heard men sing

to break like the stems that held you

 

 

you have sat in the hair of young girls

like roses themselves, feeling like roses,

and you know, you know what happened

 

 

I gave roses to a lady once and she put them

on her dresser and hugged them and smelled them

and now the lady is gone and the roses are gone

but the dresser is there, I see the dresser

and on the boulevards I see you again

 

 

alive again! yes!

and, I am still

alive.

 

 

rose, rose

bark for me

 

 

walking last night

feeling my flesh fat about my girth

old dreams faint as fireflies

I came upon a flower

and like a giant god gone mad

yanked off its head

and then put the petals in my pocket

feeling and tearing

soft insides, ha so!—

like defiling a virgin.

she hugged you, she loved you

and she died, and

 

 

in my room, hand out of pocket,

the first night’s drink, and

along the edge of the glass,

the same same scarlet

virgin and thorn, my hand

my hand my hand; bark, rose

teeth of centuries blooming

in the sun, vast god damned

god pulling these poems out

of my head.

 

 

it is like tanks come through Hungary and

I am looking for matchsticks to

build a soul

 

 

it is the hunger of the intestine

and feeling sorry for a

radio dropped and broken last Tuesday night

 

 

Gertrude knows what is left of me

but she can hardly boil an egg and

she can’t boil me

or put me together like

matchsticks

but some day I must send you

some of her poems or

her old shoe once worn by a

duchess

 

 

there isn’t anybody on the street now

the street is empty and

Spain sits like a hidden flower

in my coffeepot as

the audience applauds the bones of

Vivaldi

 

 

and I could go on

tossing phrases like

burning candles

but I leave that to the

acrobats

 

 

a loaf of bread

dog bark

babycry

the matchless failure of

bright things

 

 

her leaning forward

over a cup of tea

telling me—

you are a kind man

you are a very kind

man

 

 

the eyes believing dynasties of softness

the hands touching my neck

the cars going by

 

 

the snails sleeping with pictures of Christ

 

 

I phrase the ending like hatchets

or a bush burned down

and kiss a staring

greenblue

eye

 

 

greenblue eye

like faded drapes the light burned through

 

 

and my god

another woman another night

going on

 

 

the rats are thimbles in cats’ paws when it

rains in Miami

and the fence falls down

 

 

the world is on its back

legs lifted

and I enter again

into the

sweat and stink and torture—

a very kind man

gentle as a knife

 

 

the brilliant hush of parrots

 

 

Gertrude lives in a place by the freeway

and I live here—

the mice the garbage the lack of air

the gallantry

 

 

and

outside of here:

young girls skipping rope

strong enough to hang the men

now nowhere

about

 

 

me?:

        I dreamed I drank an Arrow shirt

        and stole a broken

        pail.

 

 

As my skin wrinkles in warning like

paint on a burning wall

fruitflies with sterile

orange-grey

eyes

stare at me

while I dream of lavender ladies as impossible

and beautiful as

immortality

 

 

as my skin wrinkles in warning

I read
The New York Times

while spiders wrestle with ants in shaded roots

of grass

and whores lift their hands to heaven for

love

while the white mice

huddle in controversy over a

piece of cheese

 

 

as my skin wrinkles in warning

I think of Carthage and Rome and

Berlin

I think of young girls crossing their

nylon legs at bus stops

 

 

as my skin wrinkles in warning like

paint on a burning wall

I get up from my chair to drink water

on a pleasant afternoon

and I wonder about water

I wonder about me,

a warm thermometer kind of wonderment

that rises like a butterfly

in a distilled pale yellow afternoon

and then I walk back out

and sit on my chair

and don’t think anymore—

as to the strain of broken ladders and old war

movies—

I let everything

burn.

 

 

maybe I’ll win the Irish Sweepstakes

maybe I’ll go nuts

maybe

maybe unemployment insurance or

a rich lesbian at the top of a hill

 

 

maybe re-incarnation as a frog…

or $70,000 found floating in a plastic sack

in the bathtub

 

 

I need help

I am a fat man being eaten by

green trees

butterflies and

you

 

 

turn turn

light the lamp

my teeth ache the teeth of my soul ache

I can’t sleep I

pray for the dead streetcars

the white mice

engines on fire

blood on a green gown in an operating room in

San Francisco

and I am caught

ow ow

wild: my body being there filled with nothing but

me

me caught halfway between suicide and

old age

hustling in factories next to the

young boys

keeping pace

burning my blood like gasoline and

making the foreman

grin

 

 

my poems are only scratchings

on the floor of a

cage.

 

 

a rose

red sunlight;

I take it apart

in the garage

like a puzzle:

the petals are as greasy

as old bacon

and fall

like the maidens of the world

backs to floor

and I look up

at the old calendar

hung from a nail

and touch

my wrinkled face

and smile

because

the secret

is beyond me.