is that desire. How long will the urge to be
remain. Every little bogus town
on the Union Pacific bears the scar
of an expert linear division.
The rustic spades
at the Jim Dandy Club
took his money
like sea winds lift
the feathers of a gull
“Compared to the majestic legal thievery
of Commodore Vanderbilt men like Jay Gould
and Jim Fisk were second-story workers . . .”
(rest comfortably Daniel Drew)
Each side of the shining double knife
from Chicago to Frisco
to Denver, the Cheyenne cutoff
the Right of Way they called it
and still it runs that way
right through the heart
the Union Pacific rails run also to Portland.
Even through the heart of the blue beech
hard as it is.
2000 miles or so
each hamlet
the winter sanctuary
of the rare Jailbird
and the Ishmaelite
the esoteric summer firebombs
of Chicago
the same scar tissue
I saw in Pocatello
made
by the rapacious geo-economic
surgery of Harriman, the old isolator
that ambassador-at-large
You talk of color?
Oh cosmological america, how well
and with what geometry
you teach your citizens
FROM GUNSLINGER
Book I
The curtain might rise
anywhere on a single speaker
for Paul Dorn
I met in Mesilla
The Cautious Gunslinger
of impeccable personal smoothness
and slender leather encased hands
folded casually
to make his knock.
He would show you his map.
There is your domain.
Is it the domicile it looks to be
or simply a retinal block
of seats in,
he will flip the phrase
the theater of impatience.
If it is where you are,
the footstep in the flat above
in a foreign land
or any shimmer the city
sends you
the prompt sounds
of a metropolitan nearness
he will unroll the map of locations.
His knock resounds
inside its own smile, where?
I ask him is my heart.
Not this pump he answers
artificial already and bound
touching me
with his leathern finger
as the Queen of Hearts burns
from his gauntlet into my eyes.
Flageolets of fire
he says there will be.
This is for your sadly missing heart
the girl you left
in Juarez, the blank
political days press her now
in the narrow adobe
confines of the river town
her dress is torn
by the misadventure of
her gothic search
The mission bells are ringing
in Kansas.
Have you left something out:
Negative, says my Gunslinger,
no thing is omitted.
Time is more fundamental than space.
It is, indeed, the most pervasive
of all the categories
in other words
theres plenty of it.
And it stretches things themselves
until they blend into one,
so if youve seen one thing
youve seen them all.
I held the reins of his horse
while he went into the desert
to pee. Yes, he reflected
when he returned, that’s less.
How long, he asked
have you been in this territory.
Years I said. Years.
Then you will know where we can have
a cold drink before sunset and then a bed
will be my desire
if you can find one for me
I have no wish to continue
my debate with men,
my mare lathers with tedium
her hooves are dry
Look they are covered with the alkali
of the enormous space
Need I repeat, we have come
without sleep from Nuevo Laredo.
And why do you have such a horse
Gunslinger? I asked. Don’t move
he replied
the sun rests deliberately
on the rim of the sierra.
And where will you now I asked.
Five days northeast of here
depending of course on whether one’s horse
is of iron or flesh
there is a city called Boston
and in that city there is ahotel
whose second floor has been let
to an inscrutable Texan named Hughes
Howard? I asked
The very same.
And what do you mean by inscrutable,
oh Gunslinger?
I mean to say that He
has not been seen since 1833.
But when you have found him my Gunslinger
what will you do, oh what will you do?
You would not know
that the souls of old Texans
are in jeopardy in a way not common
to other men, my singular friend.
You would not know
of the long plains night
where they carry on
and arrange their genetic duels
with men of other states—
so there is a longhorn bull half mad
half deity
who awaits an account from me
back of the sun you nearly disturbed
just then.
Lets have that drink.
STRUM
strum
And by that sound
we had come there, false fronts
my Gunslinger said make
the people mortal
and give their business
an inward cast. They cause culture.
Honk HONK, Honk HONK Honk
that sound comes
at the end of the dusty street,
where we meet the gaudy Madam
of that very cabaret going in
where our drink is to be drunk—
Hello there, Slinger! Long time
no see
what brings you, who’s your friend,
to these parts, and where
if you don’t mind my asking, Hello,
are you headed . .
Boston!? you don’t say, Boston
is an actionable town they say
never been there myself
Not that I mean to slight the boys
but I’ve had some nice girls
from up Boston way
they turned out real spunky!
But you look like you
always did Slinger, you
still make me shake, I mean
why do you think I’ve got my hand on
my hip if not to steady myself
and the way I twirl this
Kansas City parasol
if not to keep the dazzle
of them spurs outa my eyes
Miss Lil! I intervened
you mustn’t slap my
Gunslinger on the back
in such an off hand manner
I think the sun, the moon
and some of the stars are
kept in their tracks
by this Person’s equilibrium
or at least I sense some eff
ect
on the perigee and apogee of all
our movements in this, I can’t quite say,
man’s presence, the setting sun’s
attention I would allude to
and the very appearance
of his neurasthenic mare
a genuine Nejdee
lathered, as you can see, with abstract fatigue
Shit, Slinger! you still got that
marvelous creature, and who is this
funny talker, you pick him up
in some sludgy seat of higher
learnin, Creeps! you always did
hang out with some curious refugees.
Anyway come up and see me
and bring your friend, anytime
if you’re gonna be in town we
got an awful lot to talk about
for instance, remember that man
you was always looking for
name of Hughes?
Howard? I asked
You got it—that was
the gent’s first handle
a texas dynamiter he was
back in ’32
always turned my girls on a lot
when he blew In,
A man in the house
is worth 2 in the street
anyday, like I say this
Hughes had a kind of interest
about him, namely
a saddle bag full of currency
which don’t hurt none
You remember there was this trick
they called her Jane—
she got religion & left the unit
but I heard this Hughes
Howard? I asked
Right, boy
they say he moved to Vegas
or bought Vegas and
moved it.
I can’t remember which.
Anyway, I remember you had
what your friend here
might call an obsession
about the man—
don’t tell me you’re
still looking for him
I mean they say,
can’t prove it by me,
this Hughes—
Howard? I asked
Hey Slinger you better shut
that boy up!
Cut it, my friend
I was just—
Drop it!
Anyway, they say
this Howard is kinda
peculiar about bein Seen
like anywhere anytime
sort of a special type
like a lotta texans I know
plumb strange the way
they operate.
You know,
I had to deal with a texan once
nearly drove one of my best girls Out,
insisted on her playing black jack
with his stud horse
who was pretty good
held the cards with his hooves
real articulate like and could add
fastern most humans
recall before I put a stop to it
we had special furniture
hauled in from Topeka.
That horse would sit at
the table all night, terrible
on whiskey and rolled
a fair smoke
and this texan insisted he was
payin for my girl’s time
and he could use it any way he
saw fit
as long as he was payin like
and I had to explain
a technical point to that Shareholder
namely, that he was payin for her ass,
which is not time!
How did you get rid of him
I asked
Well boy, that was singular
you know I thought and thought
and I was plum stumpt
that is,
until one of my Regulars of the time
who had an interest in this girl
can’t recall her name
but you’d know the fella
a wrangler from wyoming, THE Word
his name was
anyway he Suggested we
turn that horse on—
Hughes? I asked.
Jesus! Slinger can’t you do
something about that refugee
no! his mother was Religious
so we turned this stud on
and it took most of a Tampico
shipment to do the job
but I’ll tell you Slinger
that horse laughed all that night
and they carried him out next morning
and put him on the stage
for Amarillo, him and the texan
sittin in there all alone
and that horse was tellin everybody
what to do
Get that strong box up there,
get them “horses” hitched up
he’d say
rollin a big tampico bomber with his hooves
his shoes had come off, you see,
and he could do it so natural anyway
and then he’d kinda lounge
inside the stage coach and
lean out the window winkin
at the girls, showing
his teeth, I can’t say he was
Unattractive, something kinda
handsome about his big face
and suggestive he was
a sorta manner
he had
He kept sayin Can You Manage?
and Thank You!
every time the hostler hitched up
another horse
and then he had a kinda what
you might call a derisive air
when he’d say “Due In On Monday”
because you see it was Sunday
when they left town, but
he kept knockin his right hoof
against the inside of the coach
sayin You All Alright Out There?
and he had the texan’s hat on
a stetson XX sorta cockwise
on his head it was
I tell you Slinger you would of
split your levis and dropped your
beads to seen it.
Because he
was sayin some of the abstractest
things you ever heard
like Celery Is Crisp!
and we ain’t seen him
or that individual texan
who owned him since.
I swear
that stud must have become a congressman
or something since then
He sure was going strong on that
fresh Tampico—Some of the hands
that was there that day in fact
claimed he didn’t leave on the stage
at all, there’s still people
around here who’ll claim that horse
flew back west when the texan
went to sleep 5 miles out of town.
Where were we I asked,
when I noticed my Gunslinger
had retired to a shady spot
cast by the town’s one cottonwood
Hold on, requested the Gunslinger
and held a conference to the side
with Lil
and then he kissed with a smile
her hand and she said you boys
enjoy yourself, I’ll see about you later.
Then as we mounted the steps
of the cabaret
The Gunslinger sang
Oh a girl there was in the street
the day we rode into La Cruz
and the name of the name of her feet
was the same as the name of the street
and she stood and she stared like a moose
and her hair was tangled and loose . . .
STRUM
strum
Do you know said the Gunslinger
as he held the yellow tequila up
in the waning light of the cabaret
that this liqu
id is the last
dwindling impulse of the sun
and then he turned and knelt
and faced that charred orb
as it rolled below the swinging doors
as if it were entering yet descending
and he said to me NO!
it is not. It is that
cruelly absolute sign my father
I am the son of the sun, we two
are always in search
of the third—who is that I asked
Hughes?
Howard?
Yes.
No.
Why not?
Because the third can never be
a texan
Never?
Yes.
Why not?
I told you, back there
when you held my horse.
Ah. If that is the case then
is your horse the Turned On
Horse of whom we’ve just now heard
and if that may be true how is it
your horse is also that
magnificently nervous mare
I’ve back there held?
Back There?
what is it you ask?
Is that your horse and was it
the Turned On Horse.
Possibly.
Possibly! what do you mean?
No, my horse is not a texan.
What?
Drink the yellow sun
of your tequila and calm
yourself, Jack
and then I shall tell you
because you are inattentive
and expect reason to Follow
as some future chain gang does
a well worn road.
Look, by the way, a fight
has started, order again
before the place is Smashed
I then did order, yet
wondered, the inexplicability
of all that had, in this half
hour passed. And when
the divine tequilas were served
we two had retired to a table
obscure in the corner.
Lo que pasa he breathed
this place is
in the constructive process
of ruin—Gaze upon it:
tables upended, the flak
of chips and drink surrounds us
with perfect, monday night slowmotion