like an everlasting 4th of July,
and I too seem to swell inside,
a kind of unknown bursting, a
feeling, perhaps, that there isn’t any
enemy
anywhere.
and I reach down into the box
and there is
nothing—not even a
letter from the gas co. saying they will
shut it off
again.
not even a short note from my x-wife
bragging about her present
happiness.
my hand searches the mailbox in a kind of
disbelief long after the mind has
given up.
there’s not even a dead fly
down in there.
I am a fool, I think, I should have known it
works like this.
I go inside as all the flowers leap to
please me.
anything? the woman
asks.
nothing, I answer, what’s for
breakfast?
spring swan
swans die in the Spring too
and there it floated
dead on a Sunday
sideways
circling in the current
and I walked to the rotunda
and overhead
gods in chariots
dogs, women
circled,
and death
ran down my throat
like a mouse,
and I heard the people coming
with their picnic bags
and laughter,
and I felt guilty
for the swan
as if death
were a thing of shame
and like a fool
I walked away
and left them
my beautiful swan.
how is your heart?
during my worst times
on the park benches
in the jails
or living with
whores
I always had this certain
contentment—
I wouldn’t call it
happiness—
it was more of an inner
balance
that settled for
whatever was occurring
and it helped in the
factories
and when relationships
went wrong
with the
girls.
it helped
through the
wars and the
hangovers
the backalley fights
the
hospitals.
to awaken in a cheap room
in a strange city and
pull up the shade—
this was the craziest kind of
contentment
and to walk across the floor
to an old dresser with a
cracked mirror—
see myself, ugly,
grinning at it all.
what matters most is
how well you
walk through the
fire.
closing time
around 2 a.m.
in my small room
after turning off the poem
machine
for now
I continue to light
cigarettes and listen to
Beethoven on the
radio.
I listen with a
strange and lazy
aplomb,
knowing there’s still a poem
or two left to write, and
I feel damn
fine, at long
last,
as once again I
admire the verve and gamble
of this composer
now dead for over 100
years,
who’s younger and wilder
than you are
the centuries are sprinkled
with rare magic
with divine creatures
who help us get past the common
and
extraordinary ills
that beset us.
I light the next to last
cigarette
remember all the 2 a.m.s
of my past,
put out of the bars
at closing time,
put out on the streets
(a ragged band of
solitary lonely
humans
we were)
each walking home
alone.
this is much better: living
where I now
live
and listening to
the reassurance
the kindness
of this unexpected
SYMPHONY OF TRIUMPH:
a new life.
racetrack parking lot at the end of the day
I watch them push the crippled and the infirm
in their wheelchairs
on to the electric lift
which carries them up into the long bus
where each chair is locked down
and each person has a window
of their own.
they are all white-skinned, like
pale paint on thin cardboard;
most of them are truly old;
there are a number of women, a few old
men, and 3 surprisingly young men
2 of whom wear neck braces that gleam
in the late afternoon sun
and all 3 with arms as thin as
rope and hands that resemble clenched
claws.
the caretaker seems very kind, very
understanding, he’s a
marvelous fat fellow with a
rectangular head and he wears a broad
smile which is not
false.
the old women are either extremely thin
or overweight.
most have humped backs and shoulders
and wispy
very straight
white hair.
they sit motionless, look straight
ahead as the electric lift raises them
on to the bus.
there is no conversation;
they appear calm and not embittered
by their plight. both men and women
are soon loaded on to the waiting bus except for
the last one, a very old man, almost skeletal,
with a tiny round head, completely bald, a
shining white dot against the late afternoon sky,
waving a cane above his head as he is
pushed shouting on to the electric lift:
“WELL, THEY ROBBED OUR ASSES
AGAIN, CLEANED US OUT, WE’RE A
BUNCH OF SUCKERS TOTTERING ON THE
EDGE OF OUR GRAVES AND WE LET THEM TAKE
OUR LAST PENNY AGAIN!
” as he speaks
he waves the cane above his head and
cracks the marvelous fat fellow
who is pushing his chair,
cracks the cane against the side of
the caretaker’s head.
it’s a mighty blow and
the attendant staggers, grabs
hard at the back of the
wheelchairas
the old man yells: “OH, JERRY,
I’M SORRY, I’M SO SORRY, WHAT CAN I
DO? WHAT
CAN I DO?”
Jerry steadies himself, he is not badly hurt.
it’s a small concussion but within an hour
he will possess a knot the size of an
apricot.
“it’s all right, Sandy, only
I’ve told you again and again, please
be careful with that damned
cane…”
Sandy is pushed on to the electric
lift, it rises and he disappears into
the bus’s dark interior.
then Jerry climbs slowly into the bus, takes
the wheel, starts up, the door closes with a hiss,
the bus begins to move to the exit,
and on the back of the vehicle
in bold white letters
on dark blue background
I see the words:
HARBOR HOME OF LOVE.
there
the centerfielder
turns
rushes back
reaches up his glove
and
snares the
ball,
we are all him for
that moment,
sucking the air
into our
gut.
as the crowd roars like
crazy
we rifle the ball back
through the
miraculous
air.
Dinosauria, we
born like this
into this
as the chalk faces smile
as Mrs. Death laughs
as the elevators break
as political landscapes dissolve
as the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree
as the oily fish spit out their oily prey
as the sun is masked
we are
born like this
into this
into these carefully mad wars
into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
into bars where people no longer speak to each other
into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings
born into this
into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die
into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty
into a country where the jails are full and the mad houses closed
into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes
born into this
walking and living through this
dying because of this
muted because of this
castrated
debauched
disinherited
because of this
fooled by this
used by this
pissed on by this
made crazy and sick by this
made violent
made inhuman
by this
the heart is blackened
the fingers reach for the throat
the gun
the knife
the bomb
the fingers reach toward an unresponsive god
the fingers reach for the bottle
the pill
the powder
we are born into this sorrowful deadliness
we are born into a government 60 years in debt
that soon will be unable to even pay the interest on that debt
and the banks will burn
money will be useless
there will be open and unpunished murder in the streets
it will be guns and roving mobs
land will be useless
food will become a diminishing return
nuclear power will be taken over by the many
explosions will continually shake the earth
radiated robot men will stalk each other
the rich and the chosen will watch from space platforms
Dante’s Inferno will be made to look like a children’s playground
the sun will not be seen and it will always be night
trees will die
all vegetation will die
radiated men will eat the flesh of radiated men
the sea will be poisoned
the lakes and rivers will vanish
rain will be the new gold
the rotting bodies of men and animals will stink in the dark wind
the last few survivors will be overtaken by new and hideous diseases
and the space platforms will be destroyed by attrition
the petering out of supplies
the natural effect of general decay
and there will be the most beautiful silence never heard
born out of that.
the sun still hidden there
awaiting the next chapter.
mind and heart
unaccountably we are alone
forever alone
and it was meant to be
that way,
it was never meant
to be any other way—
and when the death struggle
begins
the last thing I wish to see
is
a ring of human faces
hovering over me—
better just my old friends,
the walls of my self,
let only them be there.
I have been alone but seldom
lonely.
I have satisfied my thirst
at the well
of my self
and that wine was good,
the best I ever had,
and to night
sitting
staring into the dark
I now finally understand
the dark and the
light and everything
in between.
peace of mind and heart
arrives
when we accept what
is:
having been
born into this
strange life
we must accept
the wasted gamble of our
days
and take some satisfaction in
the pleasure of
leaving it all
behind.
cry not for me.
grieve not for me.
read
what I’ve written
then
forget it
all.
drink from the well
of your self
and begin
again.
TB
I had it for a year, really put in
a lot of
bedroom time, slept upright on
two pillows to keep from coughing,
all the blood drained from my head
and often I’d awaken to find myself
slipping sideways off the
bed.
since my TB was contagious I didn’t
have any visitors and the phone
stopped ringing
and that was the lucky
part.
during the day I tried TV and food,
neither of which went down very
well.
the soap operas and the talk shows
were a
daytime nightmare,
so for the lack of anything else
to do
I watched the baseball
games
and led the Dodgers to a
pennant.
not much else for me to do
except take antibiotics and the cough
medicine.
I also really saved putting
mileage on the car
and missed the hell out of
the old race
track.
you realize when you’re
plucked out of the mainstream that
it doesn’t need you or
anybody else.
the birds don’t notice you’re gone,
the flowers don’t care,
the people out there don’t notice,
but the IRS,
the phone co.,
the gas and electric co.,
the DMV, etc.,
they keep in touch.
being very sick and being dead are
very much the same
in society’s
eye.
either way,
you might just as well
lay back and
enjoy it.
crime does pay
the rooms at the hospital went for
$550 a day.
that was for the room alone.
the amazing thing, though, was that
in some of the rooms
prisoners were
lodged.
I saw them chained to their beds,
usually by an
ankle.
$550 a day, plus meals,
now that’s luxury
living—plus first-rate medical attention
and two guards
on watch.
and here I was with my cancer,
walking down the halls in my
robe
thinking, if I live through this
it will take me years to
pay off the hospital
while the prisoners won’t owe
a damned
thing.
not that I didn’t have some
sympathy for those fellows
but when you consider that
when something like a bullet
in one of your buttocks
gets you all that free attention,
medical and otherwise,
plus no billing later
from the hospital business
office, maybe I had chosen
the wrong
occupation?
the orderly
I am sitting on a tin chair outside the x-ray lab as
death, on stinking wings, wafts through the
halls forevermore.