hear you tell them what they
meant to hear by being quiet
but the others didn’t know—
until you knew so much about
them, there was nothing left
but to be cool too and turn it
into something else like
music or dope or poetry . . .
*
It seems so fucking stupid to complain.
SO THIS IS MIDDLE AGE?
So this is middle age?
No.
This is grown up though,
at least maturity at last,
at 35
no longer kidding about
outwitting fate,
knowing what’s wanted
what’s available,
what’s what,
and not giving up
but giving in
until refreshed,
then going after it again.
(Where the fuck’s the music in it!
Hearing it’s not enough.
It’s time to get tough with the stuff
of 35 years in the brain—
demands to be met
let’s forget:
the music isn’t regrets,
it’s knowing where the potential stopped
and the real thing began or passed by,
like the stages of growth in reverse:
this is mine this is mine that’s yours . . .
I can’t go on
at 35
caring too much about too much;
when the lights go out it’s the dark ages:
mine.
ATTITUDE
(Hanging Loose Press 1982)
THE OTHER NIGHT
I went out on the balcony
to watch the helicopters
circle over the campus
about a mile away.
My neighbor came out
on his balcony, just back
from Nam and up for a few
medals. We figured the
number of choppers: 4.
We figured the number of
National Guardsmen. He had
heard 800 out at the base;
I’d heard about a thousand
on underground FM.
Our wives were inside with
the kids. His watching TV
waiting for the ice to get hard.
Mine making something, anything
to not be not making something,
anything, going over in her mind
the arguments she had for insisting
I get a gun.
My neighbor in his GI haircut
and tattoos and straight legged
pants (me in my hair and bells
and tattoo and straight legged past
—he collects guns, I argue—)
motions toward the campus. I
follow his gesture and see clouds
coming from the choppers. My
neighbor calculates the wind and
estimates the time it’ll take
to reach us.
HONKY HILL (HYATTSVILLE MARYLAND)
no blacks
upstairs orientals
and out back
downstairs rednecks
some indians
many latin, mexican,
puerto rican
in the air shaft:
ya got nice hair
why would I lie
for christs sake
you’re 12 years old
you wanna spend
the rest of your life
with straw on your
head like me? and
bleaching and fixing
it all the time just
to look decent, o
why cantchu leave it
the way you were born
beam ceilings look good
but all it means is:
no insulation, so noise
level is 850% above
that necessary to drive
white mice to biting
each others eyes out
two abandoned cars
in the parking lot
both red, both convertible
both with 4 flats
both swarmed on by kids
both related somehow to
OUT IN THE HALL
out in the hall
the sweeper, he
comes here every morning
about this time
and whistles to
all of us hiding behind our doors
would he be a famous composer if
or a wealthy songwriter from nashville
should he have stepped on people
left his wife & kids at his mothers place
decided never to sweep anyone elses dirt
made it on his guts and determination
what was he going to be when
he found himself with a broom and
the halls outside all our doors
through the open
window we can
hear the echo of
his whistle as he
carries his broom
to the next place
it sounds a little like
the kind of tune you wake up
in the morning humming but
cant remember where you heard it
what its names is or why it makes you
feel so young, so early summer morning
the old lady upstairs says
god bless, god bless the sweeper man
ERIC DOLPHY
eric dolphy blew my brains out
eric dolphy blew his heart out
eric dolphy blew away big business under berlin
eric dolphy in international waters
eric dolphy at midnight on east tenth in spring 1961
eric dolphy looking through me
eric dolphy signing away the air
eric dolphy jack hammer
eric dolphy in the tree
eric dolphy between you and me
eric dolphy under duress
eric dolphy in the army, air force, marines, navy, coast guard
eric dolphy in love
eric dolphy walking without shoes
eric dolphy against the wall
eric dolphy pushing organs around
eric dolphy watching old shirley temple movies with bo robinson
eric doplhy sitting down to lunch
eric dolphy walking away
eric dolphy riding in a taxi uptown
eric dolphy hungry, eating milky ways, smelling fresh cooked
chicken upstairs
eric dolphy watching me move
eric dolphy following me home
eric dolphy dying on my wedding day
eric dolphy dying on your wedding day
eric dolphy dying
eric dolphy dead
eric dolphy silent
eric dolphy laying down
eric dolphy falling down
eric dolphy not moving
eric dolphy gone
eric dolphy back again
“IN 1962 I WAS LIVING . . .”
in 1962 I was living in an Air
Force barracks in Rantoul Illi
nois/had a dark inverted V on
the upper sleeves of my uniform
where my Airman Third Class stri
pes had been before I went AWOL
to San Francisco and got courts
martialed/over my locker I had
a picture of an old friend from
Jersey who I often called when
drunk so we could moan and groan
to each other across 1500 miles
she was attractive to me and a
down, good people but to our mu
tual friends she was homely with
her flat black face and skinny
round shoulders/a new guy came
in one afternoon when I was on
guard duty and I sho
wed him his
bunk/he walked up and down the
aisle between the bunks looking
at the one picture allowed over
everyones clothes locker/he came
back to the desk and sitting on
it with his big muscled country
boy ass and fullback thighs said
I see we got a nigger in here &
a ugly nigger at that/I asked
what made him say that and he got
up and walked to my bunk and then
pointed to the picture of my old
friend and lover Dolores/it was
her high school picture in one of
those grey paper frames with the
ragged white edge/she had invited
me to her prom in East Orange &
I had declined because I couldn’t
leave but I went AWOL anyway
and she had her date take her to
New York City and drop her off
where she met me in Washington
Square and then went to bed on the
couch at a friends apartment/I
wasn’t caught that time/this time
I walked up to the big country boy
and said “That’s my wife” as quietly
as I could to still be heard/he
turned red faced and started to say
something about nigger-/I pulled
my nail clippers combination file
from my pocket and told him if he
ever said anything to me again or
I heard he had said something about
me or my wife I would guarantee I
would take at least one of his eyes
out before he killed me which I was
sure he could do with his meaty red
hands/I held the nail file open &
glared at him/another guy watched
from the doorway to the latrine/I
guess I meant it/sometimes I told
guys I’d puncture their ear drums
with a pencil if they fucked with
me/this big bear sort of grunted
& actually looked frightened/he
finally walked away and never
bothered me again, like most of
the guys who in that barracks
happened to be all white/I never
told Dolores/I did ask her to
marry me one time/we had an ar
gument about babies/when/how
many/it was an excuse to call it
off/I went away/I hear she is on
the nod quite often in Washington
Square/I now have two blonde babies
FEELING
tight and angled
like a 17th century woodcut
only in my veins
where I rarely imagine myself
or anything recognizably me
because blood has always seemed so
impersonal and uninteresting
unlike shoulders or fur coats or
new things to do with skin and bodies.
I love the way a fortune hunter
sucks his brandy without venom
after the wealthy prey has gone away
and wonder why I envy such classic guts
because it takes more than simple moxie
to have passionate sex by proxy
or are there people who can come
at the thought of a thousand dollar bill
the way some can at the image of a gun?
I wonder whatever happened to
post-war morality and when
will we see what was generating
the light at the end of the tunnel
or was it a funnel?
LISTS
for Deb Fredo
coverage of vernacular
deep image like say:
the dead end in the soap
or
super rabbits of the sleep in my veins
no more graphs
no more stories
no more apoplexy
just: the highway of your frame
the lush thigh of her brown eye
the cruising speed of orange clouds
the boys and girls in each xerox copier
o Walt Whitman, great housewife of American lust
you gave us the lists to improve upon
and now we wait to find out who will
or if
making our own for purely personal pleasure
as the solitary lover explains her hands
or the invalid his routines
(nobody has to be insulted though)
TOUCH
touch has asked me to
memorize your sweet smell
FALLING IN LOVE
“trying to catch my breath”
makes a lot of sense as an
expression having to do with
“took my breath away”
because you did this morning
with your mellower than me
appearance meaning eyes and
the way your clothes seemed
to be around you not on you
and your skin a light for
the way your body was reading
the atmosphere casually as
you passed through it picking
out fruit and some kind of oil
that sounded healthy and
filled your pint jar and
the name of it filled your
mouth as you spoke to me
for the first time answering
a question I wanted to sound
like “breathless” in spirit
but not in will because I am
always afraid my frightened
teenage punk will look out
from this adult mature hungry
thirty-two-year-old frame of
mine that reminds me of all
I’ve been through till now
without you and how cool the
air would have been in Jersey
summers with you around to
fill it and then somehow I
mentioned my kids and became
afraid that that would sound
like a complicated set of
circumstances for you to move
in without losing some of the
my god it’s not even the usual
sexuality or sensuality or
fun-of-another-body feeling
but something more like I
dreamt in grammar school when
the possibility of love began
to take shape more in dreams
than in watching the girls on
their way home from school or
not playing ball with us in
the playground where I know
now you could easily outpitch
me or any of the other punks
I grew up with who were as
nervous as I was about how
foolish we might all really be
and tried making that go away
with our fists so that I was
“trying to catch my breath”
even when I wasn’t falling in love
FATHERS DAY
The suffering in 1942 as Spring
breaks open my mother for me.
In Europe the Jews, the Communists,
the Queers, the proud and
loving Rom are brutalized
again. The Irish in me is
emphasized, not the German,
not the Gypsy
I hope is there.
“You can’t write books” my father said
before I did, and after. At 75
me 32 he warns “Raise your children
right, get them through college
okay, then you can write your books.”
He knows a lot I don’t. I know
a lot he never thought of. We share
little of that, though we share a lot.
Not much through words, but gesture
s
and the looks of him I carry always.
We are afraid of each other
like con men, or lovers, we know
we can hurt.
WHAT WE’RE MISSING
Old corny ’40s style music takes me back
I was a kid
after “the war”
older sisters and brothers digging 78 records
no tv
radio fights, like Joe Louis and Ezzard Charles
somehow the seasons seemed more like seasons
less like semesters or election years or crises
things weren’t easy
but things weren’t impossible
growing up was a drag
but it really hadn’t started yet
that was the ’50s
this was the ’40s
I was still a kid
life was still a gift I didn’t have to work for
all this and it’s 1974.
What music can do for us
we should be able to do for ourselves
and sometimes we do,
when that happens too often they put us away
or try to change us,
when it happens just enough
and we learn how to share it
they make us stars,
when it doesn’t happen enough
but enough to let us know it’s there and possible
we fight with it and with too many other things
blaming almost everything, anything,
coming close to being fools, but not crazy,
or geniuses, eccentrics, but not stars,
failures, but not magnificent,
or almost failures.
When it doesn’t happen at all
we don’t know what we’re missing.
2/4/76
I used to want to be
a nice tough guy
Now I want to be
a tough nice guy
NOTICE TO CREDITORS
I hate to make the connections
all evident and intelligible
and consistently directed and
informed—references and this
from this and “it” excised for
the creation of categories to then
be studied for relationships to be
applied to forging continuous logic
of structures—institutions—and
justifying claims to overlapping
areas of interest and conquest
and contradicting claims of priorities
and resolutions to no conclusion
other than “holding back the void”—
head in hands—heavy—just from
servicing the day—and the sky
so blue it’s worth a ritual or two—
at least a relaxation toward a