and those hard things like eyes,
stones in the bottom of a rank pond,
and I met her at Vince’s
although what we spoke of is
beyond me, and she took me to her
apartment, a very nifty place
with a couple of beds, a waxed
kitchen floor, and a tv walking around
like a tiger, and I dumped the steaks,
the whiskey and the beer on the table,
and later we ate, she made a good salad,
and we had some drinks and watched the
tiger walking and then I killed the thing
and I told the bumblebee that I was dying,
they had taken away my fountains,
that any going on seemed senseless,
drunkenness only evicted me from
one plane of failure to another,
but this she did not understand,
and later on the bed
she climbed upon me
this bumblebee
and I clenched the cheeks of her ass
and it was real enough, she had the stinger
turned down, and I said,
beautiful o beautiful
but I could do nothing,
I was dying and she was dead,
and later, dressed again,
I said goodbye at the door,
I said forgive me, and then the door
was closed
and I ran down the halls I ran
outside for air
those little stone eyes rattling in
my head, and I got into my car
and drove 20 miles south to the beach
and I stood on the pier
and watched the waves,
imagined gigantic sea battles,
I became salt and sand and sound,
and soon the eyes went away
and I lit a cigarette,
coughed, and walked back
toward the car.
warble in
warble in the blackbird of my night
through pitchblende breathing,
and may the counties raise their taxes
and the axman itch in his sleep;
warble in the blackbird of my night,
and may the armies dress for dancing
in the streets, and young girls
kiss the fruits that fill their bellies;
warble in the blackbird of my night,
grunt and groan your Summers down,
pick at lily stems when
cancer’s heart burns love;
warble in the blackbird of my night,
warble in the note,
my country’s tall for falling
the rust of days
from Moscow to New York
adds a terror of hours
but I do not complain
the ten thousand kisses
or the sticks and stones
or broken Rome,
but I wait your note,
my fingers scratch
this sunlit table.
a trainride in hell
GO GO GO GO GO! they yell
and a monkey reaches up and twists out the light
and the old redhead in the black dress
lifts her skirts and dances
GO GO GO GO GO!
she wiggles her well-done hump of a tail
and then the cop comes in through the vestibule
and they cheer
YAY!!! YAY!!!
and he moves off with the redhead in front of him
hair in her eyes, mouth twisted down in disgust,
and they scream at him,
YOU TAKE IT! HAVE A NICE PIECE! YAY!!!!
it is a trainride in hell,
the losers from the racetrack going one hundred miles home
to jobs and no jobs, wives and no wives, lives and no lives,
and the jack behind the bar has only beer,
it floats in a trashcan of ice and he dumps the hot beer in—
(YAY!!!! YAY!! they scream every time a new person enters the barcar)
and grabs cans and opens and sells them as fast as the machine
will punch holes . . .
GO GO GO GO GO GO!!! they have found a new one
and she dances (the whores get on at San Clemente
where they have been sitting in the bars
and they ride north to L.A.
picking up what they can)
and now she is rolling imaginary dice,
no, they are real, there are quarters on the floor,
she wiggles the dice, she wiggles her can and they scream
GO GO GO GO GO!!!
the cop comes through again and the dice disappear,
he is smoking a cigarette and his cap is pushed back,
he is grey and looks more drunkard than any of us,
YAY!! YAY! they cheer him, and he walks on.
an extrovert in a blue sports shirt
moves around hugging and kissing the women,
then a colored girl hangs from her knees from a crossbar,
YAY! GO GO GO! YAY!
a homosexual pushes his face in mine,
“have you been to the racetrack?”
I move away from him, walk to the bar and
sweat my wait for a beer.
YAY! GO GO GO GO!
the colored girl dances opposite a chinaman,
GO GO GO GO!
I get my beer.
outside, the buildings go by, people looking at television,
in Berlin they fuck with their wall,
people ponder issues of state with stones,
here an old blond presses her flank against mine,
I buy her a beer and a pack of Pall Malls,
then she says, “come with me, I have to go to the can,”
and we walk past the crowd,
YAY! YAY! THERE THEY GO! GO GO GO GO!!!
she is wearing slacks and her belly presses out from the top
of them, and I wait outside the sign that says WOMEN,
and I am sweating and impatient for the little the beer is doing
and I empty the can and throw it in the vestibule
and I drink hers too, and in the other car
the people are tired and miserable, re-dreaming their losses,
strung out in their seats, stuffed things,
taken—again—by the world,
and my whore comes out
and we walk again into the barcar,
yay! YAY! GO GO GO GO!
DANCE, DANCE, DANCE!
and she begins to dance wobbling what is left of the
masquerade of her flesh and I leave her and go to the bar,
GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO!
there is still beer left, the jack is dragging it out of closets,
the train sways sways doing 90 95 98
the engineer a loser too
popping a keg of beer between his legs,
and I think of the battles fought through the centuries,
the battles in small rooms, on battlefields,
madman, genius, idiot, fake,
all drawing blood, all wasted, wasted, wasted,
the roaches will crawl everywhere
over Schubert’s Symphony #9,
in and out of our ears
GO GO GO GO GO!!!
and yet here
this too
means something
and my whore is back and we drink
until some crazy jack turns on the fire system
and the lights go out
and we are all under a cold shower
yay! YAY! GO GO GO GO GO GO GO!
somebody gets the water off, and the lights on
and the women all have toadsheads
the hair flat, mascara gone, eyelids gone, and they are giggling,
purses and mirrors out, combs out, trying to hide from life again,
and I look away, cool at last, get a couple more beers,
&n
bsp; find a dry cigarette and light up,
and then like another sore
Los Angeles is upon us
and we are out of the doors
running down the ramps
YAY! GO, GO, GO, GO!
there is a wheelchair in the aisle,
and the extrovert in the blue sports shirt
puts his friend in it,
SICK MAN! SICK MAN! GANGWAY!
HEY GANGWAY! DYING MAN!
they move at a very rapid speed
to put it blandly, HEY! GANGWAY! SICK MAN!
oh, GO GO GO GO GO GO!
oh, GO GO GO GO, GO, GO! YAYY!!
a guard stops them and takes the wheelchair
and then my friend in the blue shirt
picks his friend up and puts him over his shoulder
and hurries down the ramp,
HEY! HEY! GANGWAY, DYING MAN!
my whore is still there when I get to my car
in the parking lot, she gets in
and we drive off past the city hall
and onto the freeway, and there is one more race
to be run without a winner, and all around us drive
people who have been to the baseball game
or the beach or a movie or Aunt Sarah’s,
and the whore says, “that Marmatz. I just don’t know.
the kid won’t win for me.”
20 minutes later she is in my room.
GO, GO, GO, GO, GO, GO!
yay.
outside it is very still, and you can hear the bombers overhead,
you can hear the mice making love; you can hear them digging
the graves at the cemeteries, you can hear worms crawling into
sockets, and the train we came in on, it sits very still now,
there is a sadness like old rivers, and it is more real
than it has ever been.
same old thing, Shakespeare through Mailer—
into all instants before we like
woodchoppers die I would like to
think that what we’ve said will
not necessarily follow us into
that dark hole that is not love
or sex or anything we know now,
and when the troops marched into
Turkey they ran through the first
village raping the young girls
and some of the old ones too,
and Anderson and I found a café
and sat there drinking listening
to the air-arm overhead sinking
in its fangs and I said it’s the
same old thing Shakespeare through
Mailer sticking his wife with the
same thing but the wrong thing,
and I thought if we could die here
now in a minute like a camera
snapped it would be much best
all the mules and drunken ladies
gone the bad novels march
stuck in the mud it is best
to die when you are ready
like razorblades and beer-songs
to an ancient Irish tune
and then some Turk took a shot
from the staircase and split my
sleeve like a tight ass bending
and I fired back like people in
a play and I kept thinking
Maria Maria I wonder if I’ll
ever see Maria again, and
immortality did not seem
important at all.
the rope of glass
the old man was older than I
on the train going south
along the sea there
then the train ran
in between yellow cliffs and
the sea was shut off and
he told me,
“in 1914 I took 400 mules
from Missouri to Italy.
those mules stank.
it took more than one boat
but I got ’em there.
they used the mules to
haul cannon up the mountain.
the Austrians and the Italians
fought the whole war over
one mountain.”
the train came out from between the
cliffs, and down in the sea
the swimmers swam
boys came in like madness
on surfboards. I had been reading
the Racing Form.
“we made bridges of rope from
mountain to mountain
always going up
and the mules pulled the cannon
across.”
“bridges of rope?” I
asked.
“this was glass rope, nothing
stronger, we tightened the works
with a wheel like a molasses wheel
and the mule and cannon went across.
there was no air power then and
when we got the cannon to the top
we pointed them down and
shelled the city below
us.”
I left him when the train reached the
track, he was an old man
looking out of a window.
I walked across the bridge, a wooden one,
over inland seawater that
smelled of rot. I walked toward the
track, it was hot, it was a Saturday in
August 1964 and the world
was still
fighting.
tough luck
good things are around if you
search them out.
I remember this time in the German prison camp
we got holda this queer
they come in handy in times of no women
and we beat the shit outa him first
and then we passed him around
and we had him sucking one guy’s dick
while the other guy reamed him
and even one of the German guards came in
and took some—what a night!
and he got shot and killed one night
trying to bust through the wire
and I remember Harry moaning
as they took the fag past
with those 2 holes in his head:
“there goes the best piece I ever
had!”
sometimes when I feel blue I listen to Mahler
no cream job, Harry,
some hairy Moses like me is just dragging for shelter now
like a picture of St. Louis in the snow, but, no, it’s hot:
enough oil for the fan, and
too lazy to change the dirty sheets,
too crazy to care.
I used to write mother about razorblades against my throat
about how awful faces on people looked
how their bodies were like hardened tar
but dear old mama died of cancer while I was lying with
a 300-pound whore who swam in all the way from
Costa Rica
and I had to get a job in the railroad yards,
shit yeah, and I keep thinking that the last razor against my throat
will understand the divinity of steel and
the undivinity of
waiting.
I haven’t written, Harry, no cream,
because I’ve got this place in the back, I mean there’s a
back window to this room
and I look out and there’s this woman always hanging washing
about 35
and when she bends over to get her panties and bras and bedsheets
and nylons from the basket,
ah—
it’s all there, Harry,
and I’m looking
EYES LEAPING THROUGH THE DIRTY WINDOWPANES
and I’m like a pimply high-school kid again
never had a piece of ass like that,
here s
he is in starched gingham,
red and white squares
and that ass big as the Empire State Building
looking me in the mouth
and the sun coming down on everything
and in the corner of my room
a square of melting butter in a dish
a piece of dry bread
and a spider in the corner
sucking Pepsi-Cola from a fly—
cream, Harry, CREAM!
and
sometimes when I get blue I listen to Mahler
or read a little Artaud
or I go out in the yard where they have this turtle
and when nobody is looking
I burn his neck with my cigar
and when the head goes in the shell I poke the cigar in
the hole like a hot
dick, but you know, really, there’s nothing being written,
yet I keep getting these rejects,
I write good stuff too, Harry, no cream—
true genius just usually isn’t recognized in a
lifetime
and so I am not discouraged—
right now I am listening to “The March of the Smugglers”
from the Carmen Suite by Bizet,
what terrible dripping shit,
I think I’ll try that monkey Malone
at Wormwood—he prints Bukowski
so he’ll print anybody. by the way, Bukowski lives in the room
across the hall,
a jerk, the other day we are all at Dirty Jane’s room,
we’re drinking port wine
and Bukowski snatches Dirty Jane’s drawers right off
and goes to it
right in front of
everybody. I mean, he ate
it. if he can do it
I can do it too. and he had the nerve to tell me,
“the next time I see you burn that turtle
I am going to kill you!”
and he was so drunk I could have knocked him down with a
flyswatter.
no cream job, Harry, I haven’t written in months
but the next thing I write has got to
go, I can feel the swelling in me like the quills on a cat’s cock
jammed in a turkey’s ass.
the sun is raiding my temples
and the wallpaper dances with naked girls after one
A.M.
I see finer and finer ways of shooting a solid line to
the moon, no shit, boy, this is
it, the typewriter is my machinegun
and RIP TAP TAP TAP RIP
ALL THE SKY WILL FALL and beautiful girls
with eyes like bursting heaven
will hold my banana; everything is here—
the waste of sewers, the dull mountains,