The Roominghouse Madrigals (7 page)

 

The landlord walks up and down the hall

coughing

letting me know he is there,

and I’ve got to sneak

in the bottles,

I can’t walk to the crapper

the lights don’t work,

there are holes in the walls from

broken water pipes

and the toilet won’t flush,

and the little jackoff

walks up and down

out there

coughing, coughing,

up and down his faded rug

he goes,

and I can’t stand it anymore,

I break out
,

I GET him

just as he walks by,

“
What the hell’s wrong
?”

he screams,

but it’s too late,

my fist is working against the bone;

it’s over fast and he falls,

withered and wet;

I get my suitcase and then

I am going down the steps,

and there’s his wife in the doorway,

she’s ALWAYS IN THE DOORWAY,

they don’t have anything to do but

stand in doorways and walk up and down the halls,

“Good morning, Mr. Bukowski,” her face is a mole’s face

praying for my death, “what—”

and I shove her aside,

she falls down the porch steps and

into a hedge,

I hear the branches breaking

and I see her half-stuck in there

like a blind cow,

and then I am going down the street

with my suitcase,

the sun is fine,

and I begin to think about

the next place where I’m

going to set up, and I hope

I can find some decent humans,

somebody who can treat me

better.

 

 

there were several hundred fools

around the goose who broke her leg

trying to decide

what to do

when the guard walked up

and pulled out his cannon

and the issue was finished

except for a woman

who ran out of a hut

claiming he’d killed her pet

but the guard rubbed his straps

and told her

kiss my ass,

take it to the president;

the woman was crying

and I cannot stand tears.

 

 

I folded my canvas

and went further down the road:

the bastards had ruined

my landscape.

 

 

Bring bring

straight things

like a horse on fire

 

 

Ezra said,

write it

soaz a man on th’ West Coast’a

Africka culd

understand ut;

and he proceeded to write the
Cantos

full of dead languages

newspaper clippings

and love scenes from St. Liz;

bring bring

straight things: in bird-light,

the terror of a mouse,

grass-arms great stone heads;

and reading Canto 90

he put the paper down

Ez did (both their eyes were wet)

and he told her…

“among the greatest love poems

ever written.”

 

 

Ezra, there are many kinds of traitors

of which

the political are the least,

but self-appraisal of

poetry and love

has proved more fools than

rebels.

 

 

a lady in pink sits on her porch

in tight capris

and her ass is a marvelous thing

pink and crouched in the sun

her ass is a marvelous thing,

and now she rises and claps her hands

toward the sea

and shouts:

TIM, TIM, COME BACK, COME BACK

HERE! it is a child in a walker

running across the cement

looking for butterflies

and a way out,

and she chases him:

TIM, TIM, COME BACK HERE!

I watch her butt

her pink tight magic butt

and it rises in my mind

like a Beethoven symphony

but she is not mine.

I have been quietly reading about

the 18th century glass harmonica

and somebody else will take the pink wobble

to direct hand;

but

really

I’ve seduced her on this Sunday afternoon

and I have seen each movement and crawl

of pink flesh beneath pink capris,

and she catches her boy in the sun

and he laughs back at her

already a man on the dare

exploring the new front yards of his mind,

and he might resent that I have made love

to his mother this way

as he might resent other things

later

pink red dawn blood bombs

the squealing of sheep

the taxis that ride us out,

or he might put on a necktie

choke out the mind

and become like the rest

therefore

making my pink love

upon these black keys

wasted.

 

 

and, I said, you can take your rich aunts and uncles

and grandfathers and fathers

and all their lousy oil

and their seven lakes

and their wild turkey

and buffalo

and the whole state of Texas,

meaning, your crow-blasts

and your Saturday night boardwalks,

and your 2-bit library

and your crooked councilmen

and your pansy artists—

you can take all these

and your weekly newspaper

and your famous tornadoes,

and your filthy floods

and all your yowling cats

and your subscription to
Time
,

and shove them, baby,

shove them.

 

 

I can handle a pick and ax again (I think)

and I can pick up

25 bucks for a 4-rounder (maybe);

sure, I’m 38

but a little dye can pinch the gray

out of my hair;

and I can still write a poem (sometimes),

don’t forget
that
, and even if

they don’t pay off,

it’s better than waiting for death and oil,

and shooting wild turkey,

and waiting for the world

to begin.

all right, bum, she said,

get out.

 

 

what? I said.

 

 

get out. you’ve thrown your

last tantrum.

I’m tired of your damned tantrums:

you’re always acting like a

character in an O’Neill play.

 

 

but I’m different, baby,

I can’t help

it.

 

 

you’re different, all right!

God, how different!

don’t slam

the door

when you leave.

 

 

but, baby, I
love
your

money!

 

 

you never once said

you loved me!

 

 

what do you want

a liar or a

lover?

 

 

you’re neither! out, bum,

out!

 

 

…but baby!

 

 

go back to O’Neill
!

I went to the door,

softly closed it and walked away,

thinking: all they want

is a wooden Indian

to say yes and no

and stand over the fire and

not raise too much hell;

but you’re getting to be

an old man, kiddo;

next time play it closer

to the

vest.

 

 

certainly sought: one quiet time,

the horses of war

shot

with their broken legs,

air sprayed with the languor

of walking through a small neighborhood

at 6 p.m.

to smell porkchops frying,

the arrayed sensibility

of men living through light and sound,

and rain

if there be rain

or snow

if there be snow,

and pain,

living through wives and children

and the sensibility of fire

when it is cold; but

the dogs want a part of us,

they want all of us,

and coming in from the factory

to a bug-infected room

in East Kansas City

is not enough

(but who the enemy is

we are

not quite sure)

only

this morning

combing my hair

one eye on the clock,

wondering if another drink

would do,

I

think

I

saw them.

 

 

imbecile night,

corkscrew like a black guitar,

the day was heaving hell,

and now you come

crawling down the drainpipes

emptying your bladder

all over the place,

and I have drunk 9 bottles of beer,

a pint of vodka,

smoked 18 cigarettes,

and still you sit upon me,

you march the dead out upon

the balcony of my brain;

I see shaven eyebrows; lips, slippers;

my love, in an old robe, curses,

reaches out for me; the

Confederate Army runs; Hitler

turns a handspring…then

the yowling love of cats

saves me, brings me

back again…one more drink,

one more smoke, and in the drawer

a picture of a day at the beach

in 1955…god, I was young then,

younger anyhow; and at the window,

one or 2 lights, the city is dead

except for thieves and janitors,

and I am almost dead too, so

much gone, and I raise the bottle

in the center of the room

and you are everywhere

black imbecile night,

you are under my fingernails,

in my ears and mouth,

and here we stand,

you and I, a giant and a midget

locked in disorder, and when the

first sun comes down showing the spiders

at work, caterpillars crawling on razor threads,

you will let me go,

but now you crawl into the tomb of my bottle,

you wink at me and posture, the wallpaper is

weak with roses, the spiders dream of

gold-filled flies, and I walk the room again,

light another cigarette, feeling I really

should go mad, but not quite knowing

how.

 

 

don’t kid yourself:

something kills them all—

finally it becomes a matter of

dying of one thing or

the other—

cancer, a new car, sex, warm

art, poetry, ballet dancing,

a hardware store, smoking grass, peeking

out of windows or

wiping the ass with

cheap toilet

paper

 

 

when Christ began

he had the cross in mind

all along.

 

 

if I came down off this one

here

it would only be to find a

better one.

 

 

meanwhile, sitting with a drink in hand

I know, of course,

what it’s all

about, come to the point,

dismiss it, forget it,

hand to mouth

I kid myself a

little.