three-dollar-and-fifty-cent-a-week room,
stiff as anything can stiffen,
never having complained
starved and laughing
only wanting one more drink
and one less man
only wanting one small child
as any woman would
coming across the kitchen floor toward her,
everything done up in ribbons and sunshine,
and when the man next to the barstool
that stood next to mine
heard about Liz
he said,
“Too bad, god damn, she was a fine piece.”
No wonder a whore is a whore.
Liz, I know, and although I’d like to see you
now
I’m glad
you’re dead.
A Nice Place
It isn’t easy running through the halls
lights out trying to find a door
with the jelly law
pounding behind you like the dead,
then #303 and in, chain on,
and now they rattle and roar,
then argue gently,
then plead,
but fortunately
the landlord would rather have his door
up than me down
in jail…
“…he’s drunk in there
with some woman. I’ve warned him,
I don’t allow such things,
this is a nice place, this is…”
soon they go away;
you’d think I never paid the rent;
you’d think they’d allow a man to drink
and sit with a woman and watch the sun
come up.
I uncap the new bottle
from the bag and she sits in the corner
smoking and coughing
like an old Aunt from New Jersey.
Insomnia
have you ever been in a room
on top of 32 people sleeping
on the floors below,
only you are not sleeping,
you are listening to the engines
and horns that never stop,
you are thinking of minotaurs,
you are thinking of Segovia
who practices 5 hours a day
or the graves
that need no practice,
and your feet twist in the sheets
and you look down at a hand
that could easily belong to a man
of 80, and you
are on top of 32 people sleeping
and you know that most of them
will awaken
to yawn and eat and empty trash,
perhaps defecate,
but right now they are yours,
riding your minotaurs
breathing fiery hailstones of song,
or mushroom breathing:
skulls flat as coffins,
all lovers parted,
and you rise and light a cigarette,
evidently,
still alive.
Wrong Number
the foreign hands and feet that tear my window shades,
the masses that shape before my face and ogle
and picture me relegated to their damned cage
failed and locked
quite finally in;…
the fires are preparing the burnt flowers of my hills,
the wall-eyed butcher spits
and flaunts his blade
backed by law, dullness and admiration—
how the girls rejoice in him: he has no doubts,
he has nothing
and it gives him strength
like a bell clanging against the defenseless air…
there is no church for me,
no sanctuary; no God, no love, no roses to rust;
towers are only skeletons of misfit reason,
and the sea waits
as the land waits,
amused and perfect;
carefully, I call voices on the phone,
measuring their sounds for humanity and laughter;
somewhere I am cut off, contact fails;
I return the receiver
and return also
to the hell of my undoing, to the looming
larks eating my wallpaper
and curving fat and fancy in the bridgework
of my tub,
and waiting against my will
against music and rest and color
against the god of my heart
where I can feel the undoing of my soul
spinning away like a thread
on a quickly revolving spool.
When the Berry Bush Dies I’ll Swim Down the Green River with My Hair on Fire
the insistent resolution like
the rosebud or the anarchist
is eventually
wasted
like moths in towers
or bathing beauties in
New Jersey.
the buses sotted with people
take them through the streets of
evening where Christ
forgot to weep
as I move down move down
to dying
behind pulled windowshades
like a man who has been gassed or stoned
or insulted by the days.
there goes a rat stuck with love,
there goes a man in dirty underwear,
there go bowels like a steam roller,
there goes the left guard for Notre Dame
stiff as anything can stiffen,
never having complained
starved and laughing
only wanting one more drink
and one less man
only wanting one small child
as any woman would
coming across the kitchen floor toward her,
everything done up in ribbons and sunshine,
and when the man next to the barstool
that stood next to mine
heard about Liz
he said,
“Too bad, god damn, she was a fine piece.”
No wonder a whore is a whore.
Liz, I know, and although I’d like to see you
now
I’m glad
you’re dead.
A Nice Place
It isn’t easy running through the halls
lights out trying to find a door
with the jelly law
pounding behind you like the dead,
then #303 and in, chain on,
and now they rattle and roar,
then argue gently,
then plead,
but fortunately
the landlord would rather have his door
up than me down
in jail…
“…he’s drunk in there
with some woman. I’ve warned him,
I don’t allow such things,
this is a nice place, this is…”
soon they go away;
you’d think I never paid the rent;
you’d think they’d allow a man to drink
and sit with a woman and watch the sun
come up.
I uncap the new bottle
from the bag and she sits in the corner
smoking and coughing
like an old Aunt from New Jersey.
Insomnia
have you ever been in a room
on top of 32 people sleeping
on the floors below,
only you are not sleeping,
you are listening to the engines
and horns that never stop,
you are thinking of minotaurs,
you are thinking of Segovia
who practices 5 hours a day
or the graves
that need no practice,
and your feet twist in the sheets
and you look down at a hand
that could easily belong to a man
of 80, and you
are on top of 32 people sleeping
and you know that most of them
will awaken
to yawn and eat and empty trash,
perhaps defecate,
but right now they are yours,
riding your minotaurs
breathing fiery hailstones of song,
or mushroom breathing:
skulls flat as coffins,
all lovers parted,
and you rise and light a cigarette,
evidently,
still alive.
Wrong Number
the foreign hands and feet that tear my window shades,
the masses that shape before my face and ogle
and picture me relegated to their damned cage
failed and locked
quite finally in;…
the fires are preparing the burnt flowers of my hills,
the wall-eyed butcher spits
and flaunts his blade
backed by law, dullness and admiration—
how the girls rejoice in him: he has no doubts,
he has nothing
and it gives him strength
like a bell clanging against the defenseless air…
there is no church for me,
no sanctuary; no God, no love, no roses to rust;
towers are only skeletons of misfit reason,
and the sea waits
as the land waits,
amused and perfect;
carefully, I call voices on the phone,
measuring their sounds for humanity and laughter;
somewhere I am cut off, contact fails;
I return the receiver
and return also
to the hell of my undoing, to the looming
larks eating my wallpaper
and curving fat and fancy in the bridgework
of my tub,
and waiting against my will
against music and rest and color
against the god of my heart
where I can feel the undoing of my soul
spinning away like a thread
on a quickly revolving spool.
When the Berry Bush Dies I’ll Swim Down the Green River with My Hair on Fire
the insistent resolution like
the rosebud or the anarchist
is eventually
wasted
like moths in towers
or bathing beauties in
New Jersey.
the buses sotted with people
take them through the streets of
evening where Christ
forgot to weep
as I move down move down
to dying
behind pulled windowshades
like a man who has been gassed or stoned
or insulted by the days.
there goes a rat stuck with love,
there goes a man in dirty underwear,
there go bowels like a steam roller,
there goes the left guard for Notre Dame
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