now dreaming
what?
a fat mockingbird in his mouth?
or surrounded by female cats in heat?
he dreams his daydreams
and we’ll find out
tonight.
good luck, old fellow,
it doesn’t come easy,
hung to our balls we are, that’s it,
we’re captive to our balls,
and I should use a little restraint myself
when it comes to the ladies.
meanwhile I will
watch their eyes and lead with the left jab
and run like hell
when it just isn’t any use
anymore.
contributors’ notes
WENDELL THOMAS teaches creative writing every summer at Ohio State University. His recent credits include Lick, Out of Sight, Entrails and many other important small mags.
RICHARD KWINT recently moved from South Carolina to Delaware. He is now divorced and is currently working on several one-act plays.
TALBERT HAYMAN has appeared in over 23 anthologies. His 3rd chapbook of poems Winter Driven Light of Night will be published by the Bogbelly Press later this fall. He is on the faculty of Princeton Day School in N.J.
WILLIAM PREWIT has been widely published in the little mags. He lives with his aunt, his daughter (Margery-Jean), his wife and his tomcat (Kenyon) in upper New Jersey.
BLANDING EDWARDS founded the little magazine Roll Them Bones.
PATRICIA BURNS is a genius. She teaches at Princeton Day School in N.J.
ALBERT STICHWORT has worked as a dishwasher, veterinarian, lumberjack, hotwalker, stevedore, motorcycle policeman; he studied under Charles Olson and once fought four rounds with Joe Louis. He has lived in Paris, Munich, London, Arabia and Africa. He is presently studying Creative Writing at the University of Southern California.
NICK DIVIOGONNI rides her horse every day and teaches summer classes at Montclair State Jr. College in N.J.
PETER PARKS teaches at Princeton Day School in N.J.
MARCEL RYAN once shaved the hair off the balls of Jean-Paul Sartre.
PETER FALKENBERG is the father of 3 children and has worked as a janitor, payroll clerk and as an attendant in a mental hospital.
VICTOR BENNETT has appeared in the North American Review, Southern Poetry Review, Quixote, Meatball, Wormwood Review, Hearse, Harper’s, Evergreen Review, Ramparts, Avant Garde, Northern Poetry Review, The Smith, The New York Times, Chelsea, The New York Quarterly, Atom Mind, Cottonwood Review, Antioch Review, Beloit Quarterly, Sun and Mummy. He committed suicide November 9, 1972.
DARNBY TEMPLE is part owner of a Turkish bath.
STUART BELHAM masturbates 4 times a day.
HARLEY GABRIEL plans to teach English next year at Princeton Day School in N.J.
WILLIAM COSTWICK was born in 1900 in Yokohama, Japan.
MASH EDWARDS once raped a girl riding a bicycle. He has studied under Wendell Thomas, Albert Stichwort, Tyrone Douglas, Abbot Boyd, Peter Parks and many others. His main influence is Dame Edith Sitwell.
TANNER GROSHAWK is wanted for the murder of 4 high school students.
SASSON VILLON is a former friend of Victor Mature. He teaches at Princeton Day School in N.J.
VICTOR WALTER writes his poems with flaming fencing swords on the throats of vultures and hates television.
STUART BELHAM’S wife, Tina, masturbates 4 times a day.
CARSON CRASWELL asks for no contributor’s note.
TALBOT DIGGINS douses his 4-year-old daughter in scalding water once or twice a week. He edits the poetry newsletter The Invisible Heart.
PARKER BRIGGS is presently an “A” student at Montclair State Jr. College in N.J.
on beer cans and sugar cartons
the ox, me,
I am cold tonight
this morning
4 a.m.
down to one can of beer and 2
cigars;
woman and child moving out
Wednesday;
the radio plays a Scottish air and
the old stove muffs out
gas, gas, gas,
if I could only sleep.
I can’t seem to sleep.
death doesn’t always arrive like a bomb
or a fat whore
sometimes death crawls inch-by-inch
like a tiny spider crawling on your belly
while you
sleep.
this is not news to you,
I know that.
my skeleton hands pray tonight
pray for something
I don’t know
what.
my hands hold this cigar
over my emptied
dream.
I am
kind of like a dirty joke
told too often told too late
when people can no longer
laugh.
there is a box on the table.
I read its label, it says:
sugar measurements: 1 lb. powdered equals
4 and 3/4 cups sifted; 1 lb. granulated equals
2 and 1/2 cups, etc.
now, there’s a new world! I sit and leer at the box,
forgetting everything:
General Grant
pea soup
etc.
the ox, me, I am cold tonight.
tomorrow I will go to the grocery store and get empty cartons
so they can pack up their
stuff. the woman saves all kinds of letters, ribbons,
photographs. the little girl, of course, has her
little girl toys.
I need more to read. I read my beer can. it says:
brewed of pure Rocky Mountain spring water
which turns to piss; brewed of flesh which
turns into a meal for maggots;
brewed of love which turns to nothing; my land and
your land; my grave and your grave; a taste of
honey; a night’s dream of gold; I came this way for
a while and then I left: brewed, screwed,
borrowed, loaned and lied to in the name of
Life.
I drink that beer.
I paid for
it.
it is now 5:30 a.m. and many people have fucked and
slept and are now coming up out of their small dreams as
the man on the radio asks me if I want to borrow money on
my home.
I can sleep on that. I can sleep thinking
maybe the next time there are riots in the streets
maybe they’ll let me join them
even though my skin is the wrong shade
and while they are fighting for Cadillacs and
color tvs
I’ll be fighting for something else—
just what
right now
isn’t clear to
me.
but maybe when I awaken it will all be clear.
right now
it’s stub out the cigar
wait for the grocery store to open and
change these dirty
shorts.
pay your rent or get out
somewhere the dead princess
lies with a new lover;
I have only a few empty packs of
fags left
fished back out of nets of yearning
but everything is fine
except the c
olor and demeanor
of the wasp,
the wax too red
and a note from the woman
on the hill
who buys my paintings:
“wondering about you. call
me. love, R.,”
and another note under the
door:
“pay your rent or get out.”
the heater is on and
there’s a pot of pure ground
pepper facing me,
and typewriter paper
to fill with poems;
everything is fine,
sidewalks echo the click of
heels,
engines start,
and I must wash these bloody
diseased coffee cups;
and I ask myself, how are you today, my
friend?
how’s it going? disappointed?
unhappy?
me? it’s tough. tough as a
good poem,
but I feel all right,
and really,
essentially, pretty soon I am
going to eat
either hash or stew, something
out of a can.
I also may lift weights and I
hope
I keep feeling o.k., although my
radio is fuzzy
and speaks of silly things like
good jet service;
it is now 7:30, and this is the
way men
live and die: not Eliot’s way
but
my way, our way,
quietly as a folded wing,
hate burned out like a tube;
the drapes are coming down
torn by time
and there is a knife to my left that
couldn’t even cut an onion
but I don’t have any onions to
cut, and
I hope you are feeling
o.k. too.
note on a door knocker
yeah? I said, is that
so?
yes, he said, she lives in
Malibu, I’m going to see her
tonight.
ah, I said, has it been a
long-term relationship?
hell no, he said, I’m not a
masochist.
he fingered his gold chain
and talked about
poetry. he talked about poetry
for an
hour.
I’m not a masochist either, I said,
so will you get
the hell out of
here?
he left. but I knew he’d be
back.
he talked about
poetry. I wrote
it.
he couldn’t understand
that it and we
were not
alike.
the American Flag Shirt
now more and more
all these people running around
wearing the American Flag Shirt
and it was more or less once assumed
(I think but I’m not sure)
that wearing an A.F.S. meant to
say you were pissing on
it
but now
they keep making them
and everybody keeps buying them
and wearing them
and the faces are just like
the American Flag Shirt—
this one has this face and that shirt
that one has that shirt and this face—
and somebody’s spending money
and somebody’s making money
and as the patriots become
more and more fashionable
it’ll be nice
when everybody looks around
and finds that they are all patriots now
and therefore
who is there left to
persecute
except their
children?
age
the decency of sweating in a rocker
is reserved for old generals or ancient
statesmen as afternoons ripe with young
girls who have nothing to do but laugh and
walk by.
for me
when the fingers go the brain will go,
there will be nothing to lift the
glass and I will sit around thinking of
white nightgowns and hookers
and blocks of night with mice for eyes.
when the fingers fail the cup I have
failed
and the soul
in an old brown bag
will say goodbye
like hedges say goodbye
like cannons sit in parks wondering what
next.
the dogs bark knives
jesus christ the dogs bark knives
and on the elevators
tinkertoy men
decide my life and my death;
the falcons are cross-eyed
and there is nothing to save;
let us know the impossible
let us know that strong men die in packs,
let us know that love is bought and kept
like a pet dog—a dog that barks knives
or a dog that barks love;
let us know that living out a life
among billions of idiots with molecule feelings
is an art in itself;
let us know mornings and nights and
perfidy;
let us be gone with the swallow
let us lynch the last hope
let us find the graveyard of elephants
and the graveyard of the mad;
let those who sing songs of their own
let them sing to the idiots and the liars
and the planners of strategies
in a game too dull for children;
there is only one way to live
and that is alone,
and only one way to die, and that the same;
I’ve heard the marching of their armies
all these years;
how tiresome—
what they want and what they’ve won;
how tiresome that they are my masters
and will probably follow me into death
bringing more death to death;
the whole way is hollow—
I touch a small ring on my finger
and breathe the beaten
air.
the hog in the hedge
you know, driving through this town or any town
walking through this town or any town I see
people with nostrils, fingers, feet,
eyes, mouths, ears, chins, eyebrows and so forth.
I go into a café, sit down and order breakfast,
look around and I am conscious of skulls and skeletons
as I watch a man stick
a piece of bacon into his mouth and die a little
and I don’t like to contemplate death because
there might be someplace else we have to go later on
and I’ve had enough trouble right here just being right here
but
maybe it’s the fault of all the snakes in glass cages,
they can’t move, breathe or kill and they
ought to let them out and they ought to empty the
jails too just as soon as I get my luger in order and
my dogs unleashed.
the buildings are all poorly constructed and the human
body is too; I sometimes watch dancers leaping
about and I think, that’s ugly and awkward,
the human body is constructed wrong, it’s ungainly and
stupid…compared to what? compared to the cactus
and the leopard. well,
my women have always said, “you’re so negative!”
and I’ve looked at them and replied, “I find reality
negative.” compared to what? unreality.
yet for all that I have had more joy than any of
them, they were positive and depressed, and I am negative
and happy. well,
it all could be the fault of firemen sitting around waiting
for a fire, it could be the fault of some guy in Moscow raping
a 6-year-old girl, or it could be because fog is no
longer fog the way it used to be—fresh, wet, cooling,
but everything’s hurting now. they found some guy playing
football at U.C.L.A. who couldn’t read or write
but Christ he had strength, what a body, he might have
slipped by but he got upset and murdered his drug
dealer and they found out after all that he wasn’t
much of a college boy, just kind of a kept goldfish
which reminds me
hardly anybody keeps goldfish anymore; you know when
I was a kid, one household out of 3 had goldfish.
what happened to that? some even had
goldfish ponds in the backyard with slimy moss and
dozens of goldfish, small, medium, large,
they lived on bread crumbs and some of those fuckers got
so fat and stupid they just rose to the top and flattened
out, one eye to the sun, quits, like a bad message
from God, but people also quit when they shouldn’t.
once there
was a prizefighter, got $5 million for a championship fight,
the Macho Man, had never been defeated but he ran into
a guy who could handle him and after a few rounds he
turned his back and said,
“no mas.”
you’d figure for $5 million a man could stand a little
The People Look Like Flowers at Last: New Poems Page 14