or breathe right or eat everything in sight
as I am famous for doing. All I can do is
“muse.” I better stop smoking dope too;
I can’t control it anymore, or anything.
Saturday night, June 8th, was possibly, probably,
the finest night of “love” I’ve ever experienced,
when just “brushing your lips with mine” felt like
fucking for a year, or coming all over myself for days,
buckets full, I loved you that night
like I never loved anyone, just dreamt of, but
never really believed could be. Now what?
Joann called, I kissed my typewriter,
“classical music” sounds suddenly abrasive
and I want to throw out all my shoes
as some sort of gesture only
that doesn’t seem to be enough
and burning them would only add to my fears
that I’m really going mad
goddamnit
I REFUSE
TO LET WHAT I’VE ALWAYS WANTED
KEEP ME FROM HAVING WHAT I ALWAYS WANTED
only
I don’t know what I want . . .
NO OTHER LOVE HAVE I
That’s a lie only not a lie
By the time you read this
I might die of love for you
That means something doesn’t it?
Even if I do what people might think is
“Falling in love” with all kinds of people
Who think differently or think I’m swell
Or let me touch them any way I want to
Or especially any way they have never.
Picture this neutral type
Maybe public noncommercial FM radio announcer
Who knows what he knows
Which no one really cares about
And he’s talking about the fantasies you’ve had
That you haven’t admitted to anyone and I’m there
Touching you wherever you say or he says
And there’s tiny birds banging up against the windows
Trying to get in to take tiny baths in the places
Where you’re getting wet as my fingers come
All over you.
I wouldn’t say “I love you” to just anyone
Or even anyone I loved
It just doesn’t seem like a bright thing to do.
Remember in Casablanca how Ingrid Bergman never tells
Her husband “Victor Lazlo” she loves him and once
When it seems she might he stops her and says
“I already know” or something so presumptuous
You were glad she didn’t say it? Well I’m glad I didn’t too.
Except I did to you which is why it seems
There really is no other love in my life
Only we both know I love most books
Just because they open if I want them to
And most music because it heightens the effect
Of “my life is a movie” and reminds me of other stars
And I love to eat most food if it’s good and
Most people if they enjoy it or seem to
Convincingly of course
And the kind of rainy day you get only in cities
Usually other cities.
O well, this could go on forever
Like “love” is supposed to in our dreams
Only in my dreams “love” usually appears
In the form of little embarrassments from childhood
Made right at last.
LIFE IS A BITCH
for Jane DeLynn
we fall in love
the love makes us
happy, the world
makes us less happy
we wonder if it’s
the love, we get
nervous, that makes us
jealous, we wonder if
the other one can
love us like we love them
or if we love them
as much as we say
if we feel this
nervous way, so
we end up fighting
or at least arguing
or at least questioning
or at least being a nuisance
to the one we only want to
make happy, because
they have made us so happy
only now they make us
nervous, so we use
the word bitch, which—
is sexist
like life
obviously, I mean
we never say
“ain’t life a prick?”
though it can be
IN THE RECENT FUTURE
for Ana
We were going to make some
money
pay our bills
think about getting married
having a kid
We would buy a loft and
renovate it
make a real home for ourselves
get some new clothes
go to the theater and
the ballet
see all the movies we missed
during our money troubles
go out to nice restaurants
again
We were going to take acting classes
do some commercials
and modeling
win the lottery
and get money for writing
about our exciting life together
We would visit friends in
California and
Puerto Rico
take each other home to
meet the folks
We were going to work hard but
play hard too
keep each other interested
and help each other out
We would eat better, lose some
weight, make new friends and
have great parties
We were going to spend more time
together
doing the things we liked to do
and some time alone catching up
on our reading
and writing letters long overdue
We weren’t going to buy things
on credit as much
or write so many checks
or borrow any more money
We would pay back our friends
and buy each other the
presents we couldn’t afford before
We were going to do alright
We were going to be alright
We were going to be happy
and together
forever
ON TURNING 35
cautious
crazy
clumsy
courting heartbreak
but
she’s the one
the way
“she” always is
because
that’s the other reason
we go on—
and we do go on—
the other reason being
the expression of it
like this
only better
SHE’S FUNNY THAT WAY
for Rain
She’s over sixteen but still
my teenage queen, as clear and
direct as a laser beam, she’s
more special than kiwi fruit
with cream, she’s not “the
girl of my dreams” but the
star of my dream . . .
She’s better than most, the
butter on my toast, the cole
slaw and russian on my New
York roast beef sandwich on
rye—New York!—she’s the
Chrysler building and 24-karat
gilding on my favorite book of
notes for reading on the boats
we’ll take to all the places
I used to hate because they
seemed so spit
eful and dated
separated from her I hadn’t
met yet but knew I’d recognize
when I did and I did and I’m
grateful for the fate that
made us us cause she’s more
than enough of everything I
always wanted and she let’s
me in on it with only the mild
fuss of apprehension over
where we go with so much . . .
She’s a little strange but nice
and twice as good as being
recognized by everyone, even
Walter Cronkite!—Oh when
ever she lets me hover about
her skin before she lets me
in I swear I love her bones
and everything else inside her
as much as I love what she lets
me see and the air it all warms
up about her and keeps scented
for me: I can’t do without her!
she’s the cat’s pajamas, the
poppas and the mommas, she’s
boss, she’s bad, she’s the woman
from Glad, she’s dy-no-mite,
she’s a little bit of all right,
she’s psychedelic, she’s copasetic,
she’s right on target, and right
on time, she’s top drawer, she’s
the bottom line, she’s the last
chance, she’s a taste of something
fine, she’s one way, the right way,
I-did-it-my-way, she-did-it-her-way,
she’s rarer than the rarest antique,
she’s a one-of-its-kind, she’s
“unique,” she’s the peak, what the
meek long to inherit, the wind I
speak to in the street at night
walking home alone but seeing her
there in the air all around me . . .
This isn’t what I meant it to be but
she is—she’s everything I meant
her to be but still she, and she’s
what she means before I ever enter
the scene, she’s proud, and deep,
and I’m loud and need sleep all
the time cause I run my engine at
a steady high speed out of some
need to supply energy to the times
I have, and she can take that and
still be all she needs to be, I swear
she’s more honest than Abe, more
likable than Ike, more sincere than
Jimmy, more classy than Jackie, she’s
greater than Ali, more gamin like than
Audrey Hepburn or Leslie Caron, she’s
a cross between Katherine Hepburn
and Geraldine Chaplin only not like
them at all because she’s tough but
totally light as air, I wish I could
describe the way she sits or stands
and paces and taps a cigarette or
spaces her quiet observations about
everything that matters like how you
work on what’s important all the time
WHITE LIFE
(Jordan Davies 1980)
LIFE
Someone comes up to me on the street
starts talking about their “love life”—
how “fucked up it is”—pushing their need.
All the cars going by flash in the sun
like kisses blown from lost loves
disappearing over the horizon of “maturity”
and I want to say “Are you kidding me?!”
But I know I can’t judge anyone else’s pain
even though my father’s 75 this year and complained
so much longer and louder than my mother
who “passed” ten years ago, on Mother’s Day,
looking startled, as though she hadn’t expected
death, or god, or whatever she saw approaching
to be so heartless about it after all.
That was pain. Or the news that
my oldest sister is “going blind” just like that
and my father dumb enough to say
“When we found out you had diabetes at seven
we never expected you to live even this long . . .”
and losing the pigment in her skin so that
when statistics or simplifiers list her as “white”
they’ll finally be right. Or the way that man today
waited so patiently for someone, this time me,
to come and guide his blind steps across the avenue
where cars flashed for him in ways I’ll never know
and me still high on the look in the eyes
of a woman he’ll never see like me. Or the news
of some money coming my way I got over the phone today
my two deaf cousins would have to wait for the mails
to hear. But maybe they should be grateful
for knowing where it hurts or doesn’t hurt
or doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do
and feel sorry for you, or me, when we don’t know
what it is that keeps us from smiling and expanding
on the grace of all that’s intact and working for us
in ways that keeps us looking for “love”
as though we knew where it was all along.
SUPERREALISM
First of all I’m naked
while I’m typing this,
only my rash is air brushed,
the rest is visceral energy
for my poetry, in this case
depicted objects of tough minded
harsh light that emphasizes
the previous generation of
dismayed bridegrooms at the
altar of the cosmic alienation.
I mean for instance me,
and Winch, and our contemporaries
were tuned up by neosurrealist
poets, trite poets, hardnosed
rugged individualist poets and
ironic pap poets of the ’50s and ’60s.
We apply the new techniques,
along with a thorough knowledge
of consumer products that share
the airless synergetic crackle
of methodologies, to our experiences
like cosmetics in the undertaker’s
steady but too subjective grip.
Actually I’m cold sitting here
at the typewriter on my lunch hour
naked and exhausted from masturbating
all morning to create the right mood
for poetry uninvolved in the ego
like the “actualist poetry” of the
early ’70s with which I was associated
without my foreknowledge or permission
or agreement or even knowing what was
meant by that term. It had something
to do with the reproduction of
objects in “the poem” as though
they were “actual” not transcendy!
In some poetry circles craftsmanship is
considered to be a dazzling array of
chromatic effects that draw our attention
like a physical presence, but to us
superrealists on the nonhierarchical
ladder of self esteem the elusiveness of
technique in a savage amalgam of clarity
avoids value judgments as to what ought
to be deceptive or enthusiastic toward
the unimaginative and divides the universe
into something spilled and something
wiped up. This is one example.
APRIL FOOL’S DAY 1975
The day came on bright and shiny;
I didn’t know what to say.
Spring finally here but
on April Fool’s Day?
Does that mean more winter tomorrow?
Does it matter? Inside I feel tiny
watching my frie
nds separate again, everywhere,
or the tv letting me know it’s not over
over there,
or my special ignorance,
the dumbness only I can confront,
but still don’t know how to:
not meditation,
not revolution,
not androgyny or drag in any of its forms,
not even poetry,
not even spring.
In my heart there are shelves
and on the shelves there are too many books
and too many of the books are worn out
or boring or impossible to understand.
And in my hand?
Those little hearts
the poems that
even when dumb, are sacred.
I’m glad we all aren’t naked:
it’s not the sixties anymore.
I want to wear nice clothes
and carry on my life behind closed doors.
I want to sit with the rich
or hustling poor and still be myself.
I want to make my kids secure.
I want to share with them
what joy a good night’s sleep
with bright and shiny morning
can bring to the heart—
the chance to start
again.
“TO BE ALONE . . .”
To be alone and not talk much,
that was a way to get the women.
To be alone and talk too much
was the way to get yourself a
reputation as a jerkoff, a big
mouth, a noise, unless you made
it your noise so uniquely you
became a freak, so personally
you became impossible to ignore
or learn from, so honest and
unrelenting and smart you became
a fucking legend in your own
town, your own home, your own
place to be alone because it
didn’t change that much even
when you were invited to parties
to be a conversation piece, a
possible save in case it didn’t
turn out too lively, got boring
and people needed something to
distract them from the ways
they couldn’t be together.
You could name those ways and
demonstrate them, and sometimes,
more and more often as you got
better and better at your noise,
the ladies with their own noisy
struggles with their own excited
souls and peculiarities gave you
what the others got by keeping
quiet from the women who were
in between, because the quiet
ones came to your noise too,
only not when anyone else was
noticing, just for you, just to