love
an old woman with rouged cheeks
skips rope again
as Hemingway’s fingers live again
tough and terrible and good,
as Kid Gavilan once again flurries
like hyacinths into Spring,
I am sad I am sad I am sad
that the tongue and teeth will eat us
must choose so many good
like these fingers of lilies into the brain
sock out light
to those of us who sit in dark rooms alone
on Monday mornings
while presidents speak of honor and culture
and dedication;
or orange moon of moaning
that my voice speaks like slivers through a broken
face,
all this time I’ve seen through the bottoms of bottles
and black oil wells pumping their stinking arms
ramming home to the core of a rose
split into shares split into dividends
that tinkle less than the grunt of a frog,
I am hammered home not upon wisdom
but upon defamation:
old cars in junk yards,
old men playing checkers in the park,
women putting a price upon the curve of leg and breast,
men going to education like a bank account
or a high-priced whore to accompany them to a symphony,
one-third of the world starving while
I am indecent enough to worry about my own death
like some monkey engrossed with his flea,
I am sad because my manliness chokes me down
to the nakedness of revulsion
when there is so little time to understand,
I am sad because my drink is running low
and I must either visit people who drink
or go to storekeepers
with a poem they will never print,
strings of an avant-garde symphony
upon my radio,
somebody driving a knife through the everywhere cotton
but only meaning
that he protests dying,
and I have seen the dead
like figs upon a board
and my heart gone bad
breaking from the brain and reason
left with only
the season of
love
and
the question:
why ?
that Wagner is dead say
is bad enough
to me
only
or that Van Gogh
does not see the strings and puddles
of this day,
this is not so good,
or the fact that
those I have known to touch
I am no longer able to touch;
I am a madman who sits in the front row
of burlesque shows and musical comedies
sucking up the light and song and dance
like a child
upon the straw of an icecream soda,
but I walk outside
and the heinous men
the steel men
who believe in the privacy of a wallet
and cement
and chosen occasions only
Christmas New Year’s the 4th of July
to attempt to manifest a life
that has lain in a drawer like a single glove
that is brought out like a fist:
too much and too late.
I have seen men in North Carolina mountains
posing as priests when they had not even
become men yet
and I have seen men in odd places
like bars and jails
good men who posed nothing
because they knew that posing was false
that the blackbird the carnation the dollar bill in the palm
the poem for rested people with 30 dollar curtains plus
time for flat and meaningless puzzles,
they knew the poem the knife
the curving blueing cock of Summer
that all the love that hands could hold
would go would go
and that the needs for knicknacks and gestures
was done
o fire hold me in these rooms
o copper kettle boil,
the small dogs run the streets,
carpenters sneeze,
the barber’s pole itches
to melt in the sun,
come o kind wind of black car
as I cross Normandy Avenue
in a sun gone blue
like ruptured filaments of a battered suitcase,
to see where you are to see where you have gone
I enter the store of a knowing Jew, my friend,
and argue for another bottle
for him
and
for me
for
all
of
us.
Poem for Liz
the bumblebee
is less than a stack of
potato chips,
and growling and groaning
through barbs
searchlight shining into eyes,
I think of the good whore
who wouldn’t even
take god damn easy money
and when you slipped it into her purse
she’d find it
and slap it back
like the worst of insults,
but she saved you from the law
and your own razor
only meant to shave with
to find her dead later
in a
an old woman with rouged cheeks
skips rope again
as Hemingway’s fingers live again
tough and terrible and good,
as Kid Gavilan once again flurries
like hyacinths into Spring,
I am sad I am sad I am sad
that the tongue and teeth will eat us
must choose so many good
like these fingers of lilies into the brain
sock out light
to those of us who sit in dark rooms alone
on Monday mornings
while presidents speak of honor and culture
and dedication;
or orange moon of moaning
that my voice speaks like slivers through a broken
face,
all this time I’ve seen through the bottoms of bottles
and black oil wells pumping their stinking arms
ramming home to the core of a rose
split into shares split into dividends
that tinkle less than the grunt of a frog,
I am hammered home not upon wisdom
but upon defamation:
old cars in junk yards,
old men playing checkers in the park,
women putting a price upon the curve of leg and breast,
men going to education like a bank account
or a high-priced whore to accompany them to a symphony,
one-third of the world starving while
I am indecent enough to worry about my own death
like some monkey engrossed with his flea,
I am sad because my manliness chokes me down
to the nakedness of revulsion
when there is so little time to understand,
I am sad because my drink is running low
and I must either visit people who drink
or go to storekeepers
with a poem they will never print,
strings of an avant-garde symphony
upon my radio,
somebody driving a knife through the everywhere cotton
but only meaning
that he protests dying,
and I have seen the dead
like figs upon a board
and my heart gone bad
breaking from the brain and reason
left with only
the season of
love
and
the question:
why ?
that Wagner is dead say
is bad enough
to me
only
or that Van Gogh
does not see the strings and puddles
of this day,
this is not so good,
or the fact that
those I have known to touch
I am no longer able to touch;
I am a madman who sits in the front row
of burlesque shows and musical comedies
sucking up the light and song and dance
like a child
upon the straw of an icecream soda,
but I walk outside
and the heinous men
the steel men
who believe in the privacy of a wallet
and cement
and chosen occasions only
Christmas New Year’s the 4th of July
to attempt to manifest a life
that has lain in a drawer like a single glove
that is brought out like a fist:
too much and too late.
I have seen men in North Carolina mountains
posing as priests when they had not even
become men yet
and I have seen men in odd places
like bars and jails
good men who posed nothing
because they knew that posing was false
that the blackbird the carnation the dollar bill in the palm
the poem for rested people with 30 dollar curtains plus
time for flat and meaningless puzzles,
they knew the poem the knife
the curving blueing cock of Summer
that all the love that hands could hold
would go would go
and that the needs for knicknacks and gestures
was done
o fire hold me in these rooms
o copper kettle boil,
the small dogs run the streets,
carpenters sneeze,
the barber’s pole itches
to melt in the sun,
come o kind wind of black car
as I cross Normandy Avenue
in a sun gone blue
like ruptured filaments of a battered suitcase,
to see where you are to see where you have gone
I enter the store of a knowing Jew, my friend,
and argue for another bottle
for him
and
for me
for
all
of
us.
Poem for Liz
the bumblebee
is less than a stack of
potato chips,
and growling and groaning
through barbs
searchlight shining into eyes,
I think of the good whore
who wouldn’t even
take god damn easy money
and when you slipped it into her purse
she’d find it
and slap it back
like the worst of insults,
but she saved you from the law
and your own razor
only meant to shave with
to find her dead later
in a
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