Trout Fishing in America (16 page)

Her clothes spread wide and mermaid-like awhile
they bore her up: which time she chanted snatches
of old tunes, and sweet Ophelia floated down the river
past black stones until she came to an evil fisherman
who was dressed in clothes that had no childhood,
and beautiful Ophelia floated like an April church
into his shadow, and he, the evil fisherman of our dreams,
waded out into the river and captured the poor mad girl,
and taking her into the deep grass, he killed her
with the shock of his body, and he placed her back
into the river, and Laertes said, Alas, then she is drown'd!
Too much of water hast thou, poor Ophelia.

 

 

For Michael

 

Turn a candle inside out
and you've got the smallest
portion of a lion standing
there at the edge of the

shadows.

 

 

I feel horrible.   She doesn't
love me and I wander around
the house like a sewing machine
that's just finished sewing
a turd to a garbage can lid.

 

 

A glass of lemonade
travels across this world
like the eye of the cyclops

 

If a child doesn't drink
the lemonade,

Ulysses will.

 

 

Butcher, baker, candlestick maker,
anybody can get VD,
including those you love.

 

Please see a doctor
if you think you've got it.

 

You'll feel better afterwards
and so will those you love.

 

 

Baudelaire was
driving a Model A
across Galilee.
He picked up a
hitch-hiker named
Jesus who had
been standing among
a school of fish,
feeding them
pieces of bread.
“Where are you
going?” asked
Jesus, getting
into the front
seat.
“Anywhere, anywhere
out of this world!”
shouted
Baudelaire.
“I'll go with you
as far as
Golgotha,”
said Jesus.
“I have a
concession
at the carnival
there, and I
must not be
late.”

 

 

Baudelaire was sitting
in a doorway with a wino
on San Francisco's skidrow.
The wino was a million
years old and could remember

dinosaurs.

Baudelaire and the wino
were drinking Petri Muscatel.
“One must always be drunk,”

said Baudelaire.

“I live in the American Hotel,”
said the wino. “And I can

remember dinosaurs.”

“Be you drunken ceaselessly,”

said Baudelaire.

 

 

Baudelaire used to come
to our house and watch
me grind coffee.
That was in 1939
and we lived in the slums
of Tacoma.
My mother would put
the coffee beans in the grinder.
I was a child
and would turn the handle,
pretending that it was

a hurdy-gurdy,

and Baudelaire would pretend
that he was a monkey,
hopping up and down
and holding out
a tin cup.

 

 

Baudelaire opened
up a hamburger stand
in San Francisco,
but he put flowers
between the buns.
People would come in
and say, “Give me a
hamburger with plenty
of onions on it.”
Baudelaire would give
them a flowerburger
instead and the people
would say, “What kind
of a hamburger stand
is this?”

 

 

“The Chinese
read the time
in the eyes
of cats,”
said Baudelaire
and went into
a jewelry store
on Market Street.
He came out
a few moments
later carrying
a twenty-one
jewel Siamese
cat that he
wore on the
end of a
golden chain.

 

 

“Are you
or aren't you
going to eat
your soup,
you bloody old
cloud merchant?”
Jeanne Duval
shouted,
hitting Baudelaire
on the back
as he sat
daydreaming
out the window.
Baudelaire was
startled.
Then he laughed
like hell,
waving his spoon
in the air
like a wand
changing the room
into a painting
by Salvador
Dali, changing
the room
into a painting
by Van Gogh.

 

 

Baudelaire went
to a baseball game
and bought a hot dog
and lit up a pipe
of opium.
The New York Yankees
were playing
the Detroit Tigers.
In the fourth inning
an angel committed
suicide by jumping
off a low cloud.
The angel landed
on second base,
causing the
whole infield
to crack like
a huge mirror.
The game was
called on
account of
fear.

 

 

Baudelaire went
to the insane asylum
disguised as a
psychiatrist.
He stayed there
for two months
and when he left,
the insane asylum
loved him so much
that it followed
him all over
California,
and Baudelaire
laughed when the
insane asylum
rubbed itself
up against his
leg like a
strange cat.

 

 

When I was a child
I had a graveyard
where I buried insects
and dead birds under
a rose tree.
I would bury the insects
in tin foil and match boxes.
I would bury the birds
in pieces of red cloth.
It was all very sad
and I would cry
as I scooped the dirt
into their small graves
with a spoon.
Baudelaire would come
and join in
my insect funerals
saying little prayers
the size of
dead birds.

 

San Francisco
February 1958

 

 

I don't know what it is,
but I distrust myself
when I start to like a girl

a lot.

 

It makes me nervous.
I don't say the right things
or perhaps I start

to examine,

      evaluate,

            compute

what I am saying.

 

If I say, “Do you think it's going to rain?”
and she says, “I don't know,”
I start thinking:   Does she really like me?

 

In other words
I get a little creepy.

 

A friend of mine once said,
“It's twenty times better to be friends

with someone

than it is to be in love with them.”

 

I think he's right and besides,
it's raining somewhere, programming flowers
and keeping snails happy.

That's all taken care of.

 

BUT

if a girl likes me a lot
and starts getting real nervous
and suddenly begins asking me funny questions
and looks sad if I give the wrong answers
and she says things like,
“Do you think it's going to rain?”
and I say, “It beats me,”
and she says, “Oh,”
and looks a little sad
at the clear blue California sky,
I think:   Thank God, it's you, baby, this time

instead of me.

 

 

It's a star that looks
like a poker game above
the mountains of eastern

Oregon.

There are three men playing.
They are all sheepherders.
One of them has two pair,
the others have nothing.

 

 

There are no postage stamps that send letters
back to England three centuries ago,
no postage stamps that make letters
travel back until the grave hasn't been dug yet,
and John Donne stands looking out the window,
it is just beginning to rain this April morning,
and the birds are falling into the trees
like chess pieces into an unplayed game,
and John Donne sees the postman coming up the street,
the postman walks very carefully because his cane
is made of glass.

 

 

For Marcia

 

I lie here in a strange girl's apartment.
She has poison oak, a bad sunburn

and is unhappy.

She moves about the place
like distant gestures of solemn glass.

 

She opens and closes things.
She turns the water on,
and she turns the water off.

 

All the sounds she makes are faraway.
They could be in a different city.
It is dusk and people are staring
out the windows of that city.
Their eyes are filled with the sounds

of what she is doing.

 

 

For Jeff Sheppard

 

No publication
No money
No star
No fuck

 

A friend came over to the house

a few days ago and read one of my poems.
He came back today and asked to read the
same poem over again.   After he finished
reading it, he said, “It makes me want

to write poetry.”

 

 

Yup.
A long lazy September look
in the mirror
say it's true:

 

I'm 31
and my nose is growing

old.

 

It starts about ½
an inch
below the bridge
and strolls geriatrically

down

for another inch or so:

stopping.

 

Fortunately, the rest
of the nose is comparatively

young.

 

I wonder if girls
will want me with an

old nose.

 

I can hear them now
the heartless bitches!

 

“He's cute

      but his nose

is old.”

 

 

I was watching a lot of crabs
eating in the tide pools
of the Pacific a few days ago.

 

When I say a lot: I mean
hundreds of crabs.   They eat

like cigars.

 

 

I think something beautiful
and amusing is gained
by remembering Sidney Greenstreet,
but it is a fragile thing.

 

The hand picks up a glass.
The eye looks at the glass
and then hand, glass and eye

fall away.

 

 

There are comets
that flash through
our mouths wearing
the grace
of oceans and galaxies.

 

God knows,
we try to do the best
we can.

 

There are comets
connected to chemicals
that telescope
down our tongues
to burn out against
the air.

 

I know
we do.

 

There are comets
that laugh at us
from behind our teeth
wearing the clothes
of fish and birds.

 

We try.

 

 

For Marcia

 

I live in the Twentieth Century
and you lie here beside me. You
were unhappy when you fell asleep.
There was nothing I could do about
it. I felt helpless. Your face
is so beautiful that I cannot stop
to describe it, and there's nothing
I can do to make you happy while

you sleep.

 

 

Hamlet with
a cormorant
under his arm
married Ophelia.
She was still
wet from drowning.
She looked like
a white flower
that had been
left in the
rain too long.
I love you,
said Ophelia,
and I love
that dark
bird you
hold in
your arms.