sometimes I feel pretty ugly
sometimes I feel extremely important
sometimes I feel like something wonderful is bound to happen if I
can wait long enough
sometimes I feel I can really understand what it’s like to be
anybody else
sometimes I feel like I don’t know anyone
sometimes I feel really lazy
sometimes I feel high when I’m not
sometimes I feel incredibly grateful for so much
sometimes I feel like the music I’m listening to is me
sometimes I feel poems get away from me
sometimes I feel I do too
ALONE AGAIN, NATURALLY
the music stops me cold,
new or old, it tells me
that old fist-in-the-stomach-
lump-in-the-heart shit keeps
us all awake at nights,
if not this time then that,
more common than the ways
we never mean to betray
even our best friends,
only love’s got nothing
to do with friendship when
the one who’s loving most
thinks they’re lost in it . . .
you’d think by now we’d know
how to keep it going but
we only know how to show
it out like it’s never
gonna end when in our
heart’s most secret files
we got a dossier all ready
for the fucker when whoever
it is walks out or tries to
make us think we’re crazy
when we know it’s only this
pressure from within to
overwhelm them with the logic
of our cause—we ain’t
unlovable or above all that
or crazy or too much we’re
just in touch with more of
what’s going down right now
inside us and together than
the other one can figure
cause they just ain’t as
involved, and that’s the
giveaway we’re right, the
fucker’s gonna walk tonight,
if not for real than in
the head while our bodies
are supposed to be like one
in the bed we’ve been sharing
and now is only tearing out
the good shit so it all seems
bleak and bitter and despair
is all the air can hold of
what was once the sweetness
and the light of every night
we spent together . . . no matter
who walks out the door of
whose heart, it takes the
best part of our lives
to open it again, to
trust the fucking—you know
that’s it—to trust
the fucking . . . some poor fuckers
never do again and some of us
just learn how to pretend
PIECE OF SHIT
Like his best friend said whenever this happened to him
and he said back whenever it happened to his best friend:
time to learn everything all over again. Begin at start.
Let time heal the heart and then hope it still can love again.
Because despite the macho upbringing, the feminist influence,
the righteous rationality of radical analysis, the years
of experience, the endless bodies and smells and sensations,
the drugs and experiments, the break ups and divorces,
the dead ends and long gone lovers, the kicks in the ass
and the endless regrets, he still understood that
at least for him there was never any bigger thrill
or kick or high or rush or ideal or goal or accomplishment
or reward or prize or surprise or sensation or experience
or epiphany or good feeling than falling in love
with someone who is falling in love with you. Shit.
It never lasted. Did it for anyone? He didn’t care.
The first thing that happens to you when your heart is broken:
you stop caring about everything else, the only thing
that matters is your broken heart and the confusion of feelings
toward the one who broke it. Maybe women go through
the same thing, maybe they expect it too. But,
like all the other men he had ever known, he was
always amazed that it could happen to him. It did though.
Only a few times in his 38 years. Out of all the lovers
he had had, only a few, a handful, had broken his heart.
That was enough. It didn’t matter. Even if this
had been the first, though it wasn’t. It didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered except the little details of their life
as lovers and all the accumulated proof overwhelming
his attention as he added up the evidence once more
to convince whoever was the object of his thoughts
this whole disastrous series of events could not be erased
then he deserved at least some sort of revenge. Only
he didn’t want to see her hurt. He still loved her.
The rotten piece of shit, how could she do this to him.
from HOLLYWOOD MAGIC
for Rain and Renee
Alright. It’s night again.
I’m here & you’re there.
The past is the past—
at last. Only the night—
“in the still of” and “oh
what a”—lights some
fires in my head & heart
that start the memories
going. No. Fuck them.
Then images, feelings,
fucking promises I can’t
define & can’t forget.
They let me know there’s
more waiting for me if
I could get over this
momentary certainty I
already had it all or
it should come to me
if I’m really that hot
and not make me go out
to the lonely places to
share the fearful lack
of tenderness these times
or this city imposes on us.
Besides, I haven’t got
the money. That’s more
important than sex or
maybe even love, at least
when you don’t have any.
And you can’t even talk
about it. When I first
told about my sexual
secrets and feelings I
got the startled or hot
or reassured responses.
But talking about money,
when you don’t have any,
really causes havoc in
the normal human ways
we have of understanding.
People feel you’ve really
changed when all you’ve
done is tried to borrow.
The most outrageous hip
politically correct &
outlaw friends & heroes
seem to have some sort
of solid investment in
tomorrow that my poverty-
induced need threatens.
I miss you. & you. &
all of you. Well, maybe
not the ones who turned
me down or let me wallow
in my desperate situation.
We all need a vacation
from ambition & our fears
for our “careers” & for
each other. Maybe it’s
disdain I’m seeing in the
ways my onetime friends
& even lovers sometimes
treat each other & me.
Not all of them of course,
but their record is as bad
as any random bunch of
strangers, & in this town
that can be a pretty busy
crowd of cynics or turn-
it-on-for-fame-&-fortune
phonies. I should talk.
I mean maybe I shouldn’t.
I’d like to be able to
turn-it-on for any kind
of financial security at
the moment. Sometimes I
do. So what. I still
miss you. & you. & you.
Only what I really want
is new exciting friends
who understand the need
for tenderness & support
& still can kick ass in
the world that matters
to our life’s work. I
know they’re out there
cause I already have a
few. One of them was
you. The other two are
busy with their lovers
& after that they’re on
their way to do another
picture or whatever it
is they do. I love them
anyway, & they love me,
but not the way I once
loved you. Alright. No
nostalgia, I promise,
after all it was my idea
we try it on our own.
I thought we could still
keep it close with dates
& weekends together &
long conversations on
the phone. But I’m alone
right now & the phone
hasn’t rung all evening
& I haven’t got a dime
or an inspiration for
a way of getting one
except to do the work
we always somehow find
to do to bring in just
enough to get us through
until tomorrow night.
Yeah, I got some dates
lined up. I’ve already
had a few. But shit,
age seems to make you
more selective—I mean
me. I used to get turned
on just knowing someone
wanted me to, or getting
naked or imagining all
kinds of kinky things.
The only thing that’s
made me really horny
lately was the way a
woman talked about the
things she did & knew
to make the money &
successes she needed &
wanted, to get to where
we all want to go. You
know. The place where
we can make a living
by living our wonderful
lives, doing what we’d
do anyway because we
can’t help it. Like
me writing this down.
There ain’t no money
in it. I never thought
there would be & it
didn’t seem to matter.
But this is 1980 &
by now I should have
been dead, or right, or
totally shattered. &
all I am is all I’ve
ever been. Broke. In
need of some special
sexual stimulation.
Looking for some male
and female friends who
will understand & not
betray me. Still on the
verge of stardom. [ . . . ]
“SOFT PORTRAITS”
“I don’t think we know how to live like
failures anymore.” I said that in 1974.
Now it’s 1980—what are those voices
outside my window over the melancholy
sound of car tires on wet streets coming
through the air that should be colder
than it is & for which I’m grateful . . .
there used to be a way of making poetry
that was all about crossing out words &
phrases & lines & even entire pages . . .
Celine dying by jumping into a shit-filled
cesspool or Jane Bowles slowly driven
insane and out of her life with periodic
doses of arsenic from her jealous aging
Arab lady lover . . . what the fuck am I
doing in the same world
I won’t cross out shit motherfucker
stumbling around in the speech in my head
like an old wino who isn’t so old but
doesn’t know how not to show it
So it’s finally 1980 & I get to start doing
“soft portraits” of myself at last
though those voices sounded hostile
and racist and sexist and reminded me of
where I am—
I am in New York City in the first month
of 1980 and everybody’s out to kick ass!
they think, though
secretly as hungry for a little tenderness
I mean sexy tenderness, softly tough & vital
as me when I’m in this
rain-in-the-streets-like-Spring-or-Fall-but-
it’s-still-only-January mood
I want to love you
I fucking do love you
I can’t help it if I thought I didn’t
or didn’t want to anymore because it
made me so soft I was like a baby out there
and some of them really are mean
and most of them seem to think it’s hip or
hot or tomorrow to react to nice as though
it were really naïve—
I can’t be no baby before I die
I got to make a mark I can stick my whole
life in
before it’s over because then
I won’t even give a fuck like Etheridge Knight
said to the Black student he was trying to
hustle for a few bucks for another fix once in a
motel room in DC we were all getting high in—
he said I don’t give a fuck about what anybody
thinks about me or my poetry a hundred years
after I’m dead, I don’t give a fuck what they’ll
think five minutes after I’m dead—
and I knew that I had been depending on the fact
that someday my real-language-movement machines
would be seen as perfect expressions of what
a person might have been making with a head of
his times—
from IT’S NOT JUST US
for Jane DeLynn
“Our guilt has its uses. It justifies much in the lives of others.”
—Max Frisch (Montauk)
I was standing in the lobby of the movie theater.
It was a warm Saturday morning, late August, 1979.
There had been a special preview screening.
Several hundred people came.
I didn’t know how many had been invited.
I had been allowed to invite a few and had hesitated.
[ . . . ] the people I had invited who showed up seemed as
apprehensive after the screening as I had been before it.
I felt liberated once it was over.
I had taken it this far, the movie star fantasy, no where to go
but ahead with it.
The mistakes seemed so obvious to me, I assumed they were to
everyone.
So did the high points.
The people I knew didn’t mention either.
They were polite, confused, seemingly embarrassed, and in a hurry.
Soon there were only strangers.
When one mentioned autographs, I got embarrassed,
thinking at first they were making fun of me.
I forgot what had happened after the surprise of technicolor
reflections of someone I’d never seen before on
a giant screen
that had reflected not too long ago a woman I once thought I
couldn’t live without. I mean
a movie.
Me.
I felt I acted like a poet at the start.
I understood why actors never looked that real to me,
they didn’t want to look like I had sometimes looked,
and why I had been wrong in thinking that was all I had to do,
make it real for me by seeing what I thought I was up there.
I didn’t know I was that.
Or that too.
The strangers didn’t seem to care.
I loved them for it, wondering why my friends had rushed away.
Why had she avoided me.
Had he really told her it had been a waste of his time.
[ . . . ]
I like to hear things like John Voight is good
but all over the place without a strong and wise director.
Let’s blame it on directors.
I like to be compared with Voight.
It’s better than being compared to Alan Alda.
Though that has only happened twice.
The same amount as Dennis Hopper.
I like the Montgomery Clift ones best, but wonder if
there’s something in my actor’s presence
that reeks of disturbed sissy underneath.
And early Henry Fonda makes me glow.
Although I know I haven’t justified it up there.
Who knows.
It’s all so subjective, as they say.
What once was thought ridiculous might be considered “classic”
today. I remember
thinking James Dean a very sorry and too old imitation
of something I thought I knew firsthand to be much
sharper, tougher, cooler, stronger, and less strained.
I mean in REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE.
[ . . . ]
And now another poet says he’s writing a book on
the influence of Dean in that one role, or the influence
of that movie on himself and subsequent culture and society.
I wish I could be that confident.
But then I must have been sometime to get this habit
of writing it down to share with whoever can get into it
as we said in the ’60s long ago.
I wanted to write a poem with lots of speed shift changes
not one this slow, but
I forgot about what.
[ . . . ]
I feel guilty about it when I can’t stop myself
from letting someone know I think they or someone they know
got their style from me.
Especially since style is something that’s
“in the air”—as Ted Greenwald might put it and has—
like music, “and then it’s gone” said Eric Dolphy
as if unaware of recording equipment and his own
recorded music living on after he would be long gone.
I used to hate it when I’d read some proper name