egg.
the 1930s
places to hunt
places to hide are
getting harder to find, and pet
canaries and goldfish too, did you notice
that?
I remember when pool halls were pool halls
not just tables in
bars;
and I remember when neighborhood women
used to cook pots of beef stew for their
unemployed husbands
when their bellies were sick with
fear;
and I remember when kids used to watch the rain
for hours and
would fight to the end over a pet
rat; and
I remember when the boxers were all Jewish and Irish
and never gave you a
bad fight; and when the biplanes flew so low you
could see the pilot’s face and goggles;
and when one ice cream bar in ten had a free coupon in-
side; and when for 3 cents you could buy enough candy
to make you sick
or last a whole
afternoon; and when the people in the neighborhood raised
chickens in their backyards; and when we’d stuff a 5 cent
toy auto full of
candle wax to make it last
forever; and when we built our own kites and scooters;
and I remember
when our parents fought
(you could hear them for blocks)
and they fought for hours, screaming blood-death curses
and the cops never
came.
places to hunt and places to hide,
they’re just not around
anymore. I remember when
each 4th lot was vacant and overgrown, and the landlord
only got his rent
when you had
it, and each day was clear and good and each moment was
full of promise.
people as flowers
such singing’s going on in the
streets—
the people look like flowers
at last
the police have turned in their
badges
the army has shredded its uniforms and
weapons. there isn’t any need for
jails or newspapers or madhouses or
locks on the doors.
a woman rushes through my door.
TAKE ME! LOVE ME!
she screams.
she’s as beautiful as a cigar
after a steak dinner. I
take her.
but after she leaves
I feel odd
I lock the door
go to the desk and take the pistol
from the drawer. it has its own sense of
love.
LOVE! LOVE! LOVE! the crowd sings in the
streets.
I fire through the window
glass cutting my face and
arms. I get a 12-year-old boy
an old man with a beard
and a lovely young girl something like a
lilac.
the crowd stops singing to
look at me.
I stand in the broken window
the blood on my
face.
“this,” I yell at them, “is in defense of the
poverty of self and in defense of the freedom
not to love!”
“leave him alone,” somebody says,
“he is insane, he has lived the bad life for
too long.”
I walk into the kitchen
sit down and pour a
glass of whiskey.
I decide that the only definition of
Truth (which changes)
is that it is that thing or
act or belief which the crowd
rejects.
there is a pounding at my
door. it is the same woman again.
she is as beautiful as finding a
fat green frog in the
garden.
I have 2 bullets left and
use them
both.
nothing in the air but
clouds. nothing in the air but
rain. each man’s life too short to
find meaning and
all the books almost a
waste.
I sit and listen to them
singing
I sit and listen to
them.
acceptance
16 years old
during the Depression
I’d come home
and my possessions—
shorts, shirts, stockings,
suitcase and many pages
of short stories—
would be thrown out on the
front lawn and about the
street.
my mother would be
waiting behind a tree:
“Henry, Henry, don’t
go in…he’ll
kill you, he’s read
your stories.
please take
this…and
find yourself a room.”
but since it worried him
that I might not
finish high school
I’d go back
again.
one evening he walked in
holding
one of my short stories
(which I had never shown
him)
and he said, “this is
a great short story!”
and I said, “o.k.,”
and he handed it back to me
and I read it:
and it was a story about
a rich man
who’d had a terrible fight with
his wife and had
gone out into the night
for a cup of coffee
and had sat and studied
the waitress and the spoons
and forks and the
salt and pepper shakers
and the neon sign
in the window
and wondered about it all,
and then he went
to his stable
to see and touch his
favorite horse
who then
for no reason
kicked him in the head
and killed him.
somehow
the story had some
meaning for him
though
when I wrote it
I had no idea
what I was
writing about.
so I told him,
“o.k., old man, you can
have it.”
and he took it
and walked out
and closed the door and
I guess that’s
as close
as we ever got.
life at the P.O.
I huddle in front of this maze
of little wooden boxes
poking in small cards and letters
addressed to nonexistent
lives
while the whole town celebrates
and fucks in the street and sings
with the birds.
I stand under a small electric light
and send messages to a dead Garcia,
and I am old enough to die
(I have always been old enough to die)
as I stand before this wooden maze
and feed its voiceless hunger;
this is my job, my rent, my whore, my shoes,
the leeching of the color from my eyes;
master, damn you, you’ve found me,
my mouth puckered,
my hands shriveled against my
red-spotted sunless chest;
the street is so hard, at least
give me the rest I have paid a life for,
and when the
Hawk comes
I will meet him halfway,
we will embrace where the wallpaper is torn
where the rain came in.
now I stand before wood and numbers,
I stand before a graveyard of eyes and mouths
of heads hollowed out for shadows,
and shadows enter
like mice and look out at me.
I poke in cards and letters with secret numbers as
agents cut the wires and test my heartbeat,
listen for sanity
or cheer or love, and finding none,
satisfied, they leave;
flick, flick, flick, I stand before the wooden maze
and my soul faints
and beyond the maze is a window
with sounds, grass, walking, towers, dogs,
but here I stand and here I stay,
sending cards noted with my own demise;
and I am sick with caring: go away, everything,
and send fire.
the minute
“I am always fighting for the next
minute,” I tell my wife.
then she begins to tell me
how mistaken I am.
wives have a way of not
believing what their husbands
tell them.
the minute is a very sacred
thing.
I have fought for each one since my
childhood.
I continue to fight for each one.
I have never been bored or
at a loss what to do next.
even when I do nothing,
I am utilizing my time.
why people must go to
amusement parks or movies
or sit in front of tv sets
or work crossword puzzles
or go to picnics
or visit relatives
or travel
or do most of the things
they do
is beyond me.
they mutilate minutes,
hours,
days,
lifetimes.
they have no idea of how
precious is a
minute.
I fight to realize the essence
of my time.
this doesn’t mean that
I can’t relax
and take an hour off
but it must be
my choosing.
to fight for each minute is to
fight for what is possible within
yourself,
so that your life and your death
will not be like
theirs.
be not like them
and you will
survive.
minute by
minute.
too near the slaughterhouse
I live too near the slaughterhouse.
what do you expect? silver blood
like Chatterton’s? the dankness of my hours
allows no practiced foresight.
I hear the branches snap and break
like ravens in a quarrel,
and see my mother in her coffin
not moving
quietly not moving
as I light a cigarette
or drink a glass of water
or do anything ignominious.
what do you want?
that I should feel
deceived?
(the green of the weeds in
the sun
is all we have
it’s all we really have.)
I say let the monkeys dance,
let the monkeys dance
in the light of God.
I live too near the
slaughterhouse
and am ill
with thriving.
a future congressman
in the men’s room at the
track
this boy of about
7 or 8 years old
came out of a stall
and the man
waiting for him
(probably his
father)
asked,
“what did you do with the
racing program?
I gave it to you
to keep.”
“no,” said the boy,
“I ain’t seen it! I don’t
have it!”
they walked off and
I went into the stall
because it was the only one
available
and there
in the toilet
was the
program.
I tried to flush
the program
away
but it just swam
sluggishly about
and
remained.
I got out of
there and found
another
empty stall.
that boy was ready
for his life to come.
he would undoubtedly
be highly successful,
the lying little
prick.
stranger in a strange city
I had just arrived
in another strange city
and I had left my room and
found myself walking along
on what must have been
a main thoroughfare where
the autos ran back and
forth with what seemed to be
a definite
purpose.
that busy boulevard seemed to
stretch away endless
before me and
appeared to run
straight off to the edge of
the earth,
and then
after walking awhile
I realized
that I was
lost, that
I had forgotten the name
of the street my
room was on
or
where it was.
there was nothing back
in that room
but a week’s paid
rent
plus a battered
suitcase
full of my old clothes
but it was
everything I
possessed
so I began searching
the side streets
looking for
my room
and I soon became
frightened, a
numb terror like a fatal
illness
spreading through me
as
I kept walking
up and down unfamiliar
streets
until my mind
said to me:
you’re crazy, that’s
all, you should
give up and turn
yourself in
somewhere.
but I just kept walking.
it had been a
long afternoon and now
it was slipping
into evening.
my feet ached
in my cheap
shoes.
then it grew
dark, now it was night,
but I just kept
walking.
it felt as if
I had walked
up and down through
the same streets
over and over.
then finally
I recognized my
bui
lding!
and I ran
up the steps
and up the interior
stairway to
the 2nd floor
and my room was still
there and I
opened the door,
closed it behind me,
and was
safely inside.
there was the
suitcase
on the floor,
still full of my
old clothing.
I heard a man
laugh
in one of the other
rooms and I suddenly
felt a lot
better.
I took off my shoes,
shirt, pants,
sat down on the edge
of the bed and
rolled a
cigarette.
then I leaned back against
the pillow and
smoked.
I was 20 years old
and had 14 dollars
in my wallet.
then I remembered
my wine bottle.
I pulled it out
from under the
bed, uncapped it
and had a good
hit.
I decided that I
wasn’t crazy.
I picked a newspaper up
off the floor
and turned to the
HELP WANTED section:
dishwasher, shipping
clerk, stock boy,
night watchman…
I threw the paper down
on the floor.
I’d look for a
job
day after
tomorrow.
then I put the
cigarette out
satisfied
and went to
sleep.
just another wino
the kid was 20, had been on the road
5 or 6 years and he sat on the couch
drinking my beer, his name was Red,
and he talked about the road:
“these 2 guys were trying to treat me
nice, keep me quiet, because I’d seen them kill a
guy.”
“kill a guy? how?”
“with a rock.”
“what for?”
“he had his wallet, a good
wallet, and 7 dollars. he was a wino. he was
The People Look Like Flowers at Last: New Poems Page 2