nostrils.
it’s hard to live here.
it’s very hard to live here.
at night the shadows are unborn creatures.
beneath the bed
spiders kill tiny white ideas.
the nights are bad
the nights are very bad
I drink myself to sleep
I have to drink myself to sleep.
in the morning
over breakfast
I see them roll the dead down the street
(I never read about this in the newspapers).
and there are eagles everywhere
sitting on the roof, on the lawn, inside my car.
the eagles are eyeless and smell of sulphur.
it is very discouraging.
people visit me
sit in chairs across from me
and I see them crawling with vermin—
green and gold and yellow bugs
they do not brush away.
I have been living here too long.
soon I must go to Omaha.
they say that everything is jade there
and does not move.
they say you can stitch designs in the water
and sleep high in olive trees.
I wonder if this is
true?
I can’t live here much longer.
laugh literary
listen, man, don’t tell me about the poems you
sent, we didn’t receive them,
we are very careful with manuscripts
we bake them
burn them
laugh at them
vomit on them
pour beer over them
but generally we return
them
they are
so
inane.
ah, we believe in Art,
we need it
surely,
but, you know, there are many people
(most people)
playing and fornicating with the
Arts
who only crowd the stage
with their generous unforgiving
vigorous
mediocrity.
our subscription rates are $4 a year.
please read our magazine before
submitting.
deathbed blues
if you can’t stand the heat, he says, get out of the
kitchen. you know who said that?
Harry Truman.
I’m not in the kitchen, I say, I’m in the
oven.
my editor is a difficult man.
I sometimes phone him in moments of doubt.
look, he answers, you’ll be lighting cigars with ten dollar
bills, you’ll have a redhead on one arm and a blonde
on the other.
other times he’ll say, look, I think I’m going to hire
V.K. as my associate editor. we’ve got to prune off
5 poets here somewhere. I’m going to leave it up
to him. (V.K. is a very imaginative poet who believes I’ve
knifed him from N.Y.C. to the shores of Hawaii.)
look, kid, I phone my editor, can you speak German?
no, he says.
well, anyhow, I say, I need some good new tires, cheap.
so you know where I can get some good new tires, cheap?
I’ll phone you in 30 minutes, he says, will you be in
in 30 minutes?
I can’t afford to go anywhere, I say.
he says, they say you were drunk at that reading
in Oregon.
ugly gossips, I answer.
were you?
I don’t
remember.
one day he phones me:
you’re not hitting the ball anymore. you are hitting the
bottle and fighting with all these
women. you know we got a good kid on the bench,
he’s aching to get in there
he hits from both sides of the plate
he can catch anything that ain’t hit over the wall
he’s coached by Duncan, Creeley, Wakoski
and he can rhyme, he knows
images, similes, metaphors, figures, conceits,
assonance, alliteration, metrics, yes
metrics like, you know—
iambic, trochaic, anapestic, spondaic,
he knows caesura, denotation, connotation, personification,
diction, voice, paradox, rhetoric, tone and
coalescence…
holy shit, I say, hang up and take a good hit of
Old Grandad. Harry’s still alive
according to the papers. but I decide rather than
getting new tires to get
a set of retreads instead.
charles
92 years old
his tooth has been bothering him
had to get it filled
he lost his left eye 40 years
ago
—a butcher, he says, he just wanted to
operate to get the money. I found out
later it coulda been
saved.
—I take the eye out at night, he says,
it hurts. they never did get it right.
—which eye is it,
it’s hard to live here.
it’s very hard to live here.
at night the shadows are unborn creatures.
beneath the bed
spiders kill tiny white ideas.
the nights are bad
the nights are very bad
I drink myself to sleep
I have to drink myself to sleep.
in the morning
over breakfast
I see them roll the dead down the street
(I never read about this in the newspapers).
and there are eagles everywhere
sitting on the roof, on the lawn, inside my car.
the eagles are eyeless and smell of sulphur.
it is very discouraging.
people visit me
sit in chairs across from me
and I see them crawling with vermin—
green and gold and yellow bugs
they do not brush away.
I have been living here too long.
soon I must go to Omaha.
they say that everything is jade there
and does not move.
they say you can stitch designs in the water
and sleep high in olive trees.
I wonder if this is
true?
I can’t live here much longer.
laugh literary
listen, man, don’t tell me about the poems you
sent, we didn’t receive them,
we are very careful with manuscripts
we bake them
burn them
laugh at them
vomit on them
pour beer over them
but generally we return
them
they are
so
inane.
ah, we believe in Art,
we need it
surely,
but, you know, there are many people
(most people)
playing and fornicating with the
Arts
who only crowd the stage
with their generous unforgiving
vigorous
mediocrity.
our subscription rates are $4 a year.
please read our magazine before
submitting.
deathbed blues
if you can’t stand the heat, he says, get out of the
kitchen. you know who said that?
Harry Truman.
I’m not in the kitchen, I say, I’m in the
oven.
my editor is a difficult man.
I sometimes phone him in moments of doubt.
look, he answers, you’ll be lighting cigars with ten dollar
bills, you’ll have a redhead on one arm and a blonde
on the other.
other times he’ll say, look, I think I’m going to hire
V.K. as my associate editor. we’ve got to prune off
5 poets here somewhere. I’m going to leave it up
to him. (V.K. is a very imaginative poet who believes I’ve
knifed him from N.Y.C. to the shores of Hawaii.)
look, kid, I phone my editor, can you speak German?
no, he says.
well, anyhow, I say, I need some good new tires, cheap.
so you know where I can get some good new tires, cheap?
I’ll phone you in 30 minutes, he says, will you be in
in 30 minutes?
I can’t afford to go anywhere, I say.
he says, they say you were drunk at that reading
in Oregon.
ugly gossips, I answer.
were you?
I don’t
remember.
one day he phones me:
you’re not hitting the ball anymore. you are hitting the
bottle and fighting with all these
women. you know we got a good kid on the bench,
he’s aching to get in there
he hits from both sides of the plate
he can catch anything that ain’t hit over the wall
he’s coached by Duncan, Creeley, Wakoski
and he can rhyme, he knows
images, similes, metaphors, figures, conceits,
assonance, alliteration, metrics, yes
metrics like, you know—
iambic, trochaic, anapestic, spondaic,
he knows caesura, denotation, connotation, personification,
diction, voice, paradox, rhetoric, tone and
coalescence…
holy shit, I say, hang up and take a good hit of
Old Grandad. Harry’s still alive
according to the papers. but I decide rather than
getting new tires to get
a set of retreads instead.
charles
92 years old
his tooth has been bothering him
had to get it filled
he lost his left eye 40 years
ago
—a butcher, he says, he just wanted to
operate to get the money. I found out
later it coulda been
saved.
—I take the eye out at night, he says,
it hurts. they never did get it right.
—which eye is it,
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