alone.
well, this is just another Ezra Pound poem
except to say
I could never read or understand the Cantos
but I’ll bet I carried them around more than
almost anybody, and all the young boys
are trying to check them out at the library
tonight.
warts
I remember my grandmother best
because of all her warts
she was 80 and the warts were
very large
I couldn’t help staring at her
warts
she came to Los Angeles every Sunday
by bus and streetcar from Pasadena
her conversation was always the same
“I am going to bury all of you”
“you’re not going to bury me,”
my father would say
“you’re not going to bury me,”
my mother would say
then we’d sit down to a Sunday
dinner
after she left my mother would say,
“I think it’s terrible the way she talks
about burying everybody.”
but I rather liked it
her sitting there
covered with warts
and threatening to bury us
all
and when she ate her dinner
I’d watch the food going into her mouth
and I’d look at her
warts
I’d imagine her going to the bathroom
and wiping her behind
and thinking,
I am going to bury everybody
the fact that she didn’t
was even rather sad to
me
one Sunday she simply wasn’t
there, and it was a
much duller Sunday
somebody else was going to have to
bury us
the food hardly tasted
as well
my new parents
(for Mr. and Mrs. P. C.)
he’s 60. she’s 55. I’m 53.
we sit and drink in their
kitchen. we drink out of quart beerbottles
and chain-smoke.
we’re dumb drunks. the hours go by.
we argue about religion, football,
movie stars.
I tell them I could be a movie star.
he tells me that he is a movie star.
a red radio plays in back
of us.
“you’re my new parents,” I tell them.
I get up and kiss each of them
on top of the head.
he’s 60. she’s 55. I’m 53.
my new parents.
I lift my quart of beer:
“I’ll buy next time, I’ll get the booze
next time.”
they don’t answer.
“I’ll be back in the middle of January,
I’ll bring a present, I’ll bring a present
worth about 14 dollars.”
“how’s your teeth?” he asks.
“o.k., what’s left of them.”
“you need teeth you go to the U.S.C.
Medical School.”
he reaches into his mouth
takes out one plate, then the
other. he lays them on the
table. “look at those teeth, can’t get
better teeth than those. U.S.C. Medical
School.”
“can you eat anything?” I ask.
“anything that moves,” he says.
soon he is asleep
his head in his arms. she walks me to the
door.
I kiss my mother goodbye.
“you make me hot, you son of a bitch,” she
says.
“now, mama,” I say, “don’t talk like that.
the good Lord is listening.”
she closes the door and I walk down the
driveway
drunk in the moonlight.
something about the action:
that
New York City traincrash was
something
so near Christmas, no,
Thanksgiving
bodies stacked with catsup &
not speaking—
then the bolo knife
in the Philippines
into the president’s
wife on stage
tv cameras on
she fell backwards
he slashed;
3 broken fingers and 75 stitches later
she will recover
a former beauty queen
she won’t be
quite so beautiful
now & then
3 guards shot the dirty son of a
bitch with the
bolo—
this guy’s wife said she was
going to leave him for
good
so he said
“let me come over and
we’ll talk it over,” and
he came over and they
talked it over and
she said
“no,” and
he took out a gun and shot her
head halfway off
killed the boy
age 2
the girl
age 4
killed
his wife’s sister
when she ran in through the
door (she’d
been sprinkling the flowers
outdoors)
and then he
walked outside and shot the first
guy he saw on the street
then
took the gun and shot his
own
head halfway
off—
one guy
he raised a man from the
dead
right out of the grave
now
that’s pretty good and he also
walked across WATER (not the guy
raised from the dead but the
other guy) &
he also healed
lepers &
made blind men
see, and
he said
Love one another and
Believe,
then they nailed him
to the wood with big
spikes &
he left and never came
back—
one of the wisest
men, o, he was
pretty wise
you can still read him
now
he still reads
good and wise
but some of the boys
in government became
upset
claimed mainly he was corrupting the
youth
and they
locked him
up &
offered him a cup of
hemlock which
he accepted.
I don’t know if he
made his point
he never
came back
either
but he’s
in the library, anyhow, every-
body’s got to leave, they
say—
then
there was this
looker
she
bandaged the
soldiers and
sang little songs to
them and
maybe kissed them behind the
ears
I’m not sure what went wrong
there, some
disagreement, they
stacked the wood
under her
got it going
burned her
alive, Joan of Arc, what a
whore—
then
there was this
painter
he
painted like a
child but
he was a
man
and they say
he painted pretty good
but he hardly knew how
to mix
paints
but he knew how to
paint the sun he made it
whirl on the canvas, and
the flowers
they whirled
and his people sat over
tables
his people sat very strangely
over tables and in
chairs, and
his contemporaries
mocked him
and children
threw stones and broke his
windows,
and what most people remember
about him was he
cut off his
ear and gave it to a
whore, not
Joan of Arc,
I don’t know her
name, and
he went out in the fields and
sat in his whirling
sun and
killed himself.
now you may be able to
buy a Cadillac
but I doubt if you will be able to
buy
any of the paintings he
left
behind, he was pretty
good
they say—
after 2 and one half
years of
marriage
then divorce
my x-
wife wrote me every
Christmas for
8 years,
quite long bits:
but mainly:
she said:
I have 2 children
now
my husband
Yena is very
sensitive,
I have written one book on
incest
another on child behavior patterns
still looking for a
publisher
Yena has moved to San
Francisco I may
go back to Texas
mother died
2 books of my children’s stories have been
accepted
the oldest boy looks very much like
Yena
I am still painting
you always liked my
paintings but painting takes so much
out of me
I am still teaching public school
I like it
we had a storm up here this
winter
locked in
absolutely for 2
weeks
no out in up or down
sitting still and
waiting
barbara
after 8 years she stopped
writing
Christmas returned to
normal and
I got the wax
cleaned out of my
ears.
55 beds in the same direction
these brilliant midnights
gabardine snakes passing through
walls, sounds
broken by car crashes of drunks in
ten-year-old cars
you know it’s soiled again and then
again
it’s in these brilliant midnights
while fighting moths and tiny
mosquitoes,
your woman behind you
twisting in the blankets
thinking you no longer love her;
that’s untrue, of course,
but the walls are familiar and
I’ve liked walls
I’ve praised walls:
give me a wall and I’ll give you a way—
that’s all I asked in
exchange. but I suppose I meant:
I’ll give you my
way.
it’s very difficult to compose a
sonnet while sleeping in a flophouse with
55 snoring men
in 55 beds all pointed in the same direction.
I’ll tell you what I thought:
these men have lost both chance and
imagination.
you can tell as much about men in the
way they snore as in the way they
walk, but then
I was never much at sonnets.
but once I thought I’d find all great men on
skid row,
I once thought I’d find great men down there
strong men who had discarded society,
instead I found men who society had fiddled
away.
they were dull
inept and
still
ambitious.
I found the bosses more
interesting and more alive than the
slaves.
and that was hardly romantic. one would like things
romantic.
55 beds pointed in the same
direction and
I couldn’t sleep
my back hurt
and there was a steady feeling on my
forehead like a piece of
sheet metal.
it really wasn’t very terrible but somehow
it was very impossible.
and I thought,
all these bodies and all these toes and all
these fingernails and all these hairs in
assholes and all this stink
immaculate and accepted mauling of
things,
can’t we do something with it?
no chance, came the answer, they don’t
want it.
then, looking all about
all those 55 beds pointed in the same
direction
I thought,
all these men were babies once
all these men were cuddly and
pink (except the black ones and the yellow ones
and the red ones and the others).
they cried and they felt,
had a way.
now they’ve become
sophisticated
phlegmatic
unwanteds.
I got
out.
I got between 4 walls
alone.
I gave myself a brilliant
midnight. other brilliant midnights
arrived. it wasn’t that
difficult.
but if they had been there:
(those men) I would have stayed there with
them.
if I can save you the same years of error
let me:
the secret is in the walls
listening to a small radio
rolling cigarettes
drinking
coffee
beer
water
grape juice
a lamp burning near you
it comes along—
the names
the history
a flow a flow
the downward glance of psyche
the humming effect
the burning of monkeys.
the brilliant midnight walls:
there’s no stopping even as your head rolls
under the bed and the cat buries
its excreta.
b
the wisdom of the
bumblebee crawling
the handle of the
water pitcher is
enormous as the
sun comes through
the kitchen win-
dow I think again
of the murder of
Caesar and down in
the sink are three
dirty water glasses.
the doorbell rings
and I stand deter-
mined not to answ-
er.
finger
you had your finger in her pussy,
she said.
no, I said, it’s just touching
the outsid
e.
well, it looks like you had your
finger in her pussy, she
said.
no, I said, it’s on the outside.
suddenly she tore the photo
up.
o for christ’s sake,
Annie, what did you do that for?
said everybody in the
room.
Annie ran into my bathroom and
slammed the door.
somebody rolled a joint and we
passed it
around.
the thing
far away into the bluebird night
is that mighty thing that might save us;
down under the bridge it sits
poking matches under its fingernails,
then lighting them;
it has lips like my father
eyes like a frightened monkey
and on its back
5 air mail stamps are stuck
randomly;
this thing knows but it won’t talk,
it can run but it prefers to sit,
it can sing but it would rather grunt;
it intimidates ants, breathes beetles
into its nose;
it weeps, it laughs, it farts;
sometimes at night it will
approach your bed and yank a
hair from one of your ears;
it delights in essential dullness,
can’t tie knots;
it remembers odd things like
curled and dried banana skins
fallen from trash cans;
it’s shy out of cowardliness
and brave only in short flashes;
it can’t drive a car
or
swim
multiply
add or
divide;
it smells its toes
it dreams of popcorn and glass toads;
it could save us but it won’t;
it doesn’t want us;
someday it will invade the sun;
but now we sit in our rooms and wait,
we stop at signals and wait,
we have sex and wait,
we don’t have sex and wait.
it laughs when we weep,
it weeps when we laugh;
it waits with us.
Bob Dylan
these two young ones
in the court across from me
they play Bob Dylan
all day and all night
on their stereo
they turn that stereo
as high as it can go
and it’s a very good
stereo
the whole neighborhood
gets Bob Dylan
free
and I get him freest of all
because I live in the court
across the way
I get Dylan when I shit
I get Dylan when I fuck
and just before I try to
sleep.
sometimes I see them
outside on the sidewalk