quite young and neat
going out for food and
toilet paper
they are one of the loveliest
couples in the
neighborhood.
“Texsun”
she’s from Texas and weighs
103 pounds
and she stands before the
mirror combing strands and
strands of reddish hair
which falls all the way down
her back to her ass.
the hair is magic and shoots
sparks and I lay on the bed
and watch her combing her
hair. she’s like a nymph
out of the movies but she’s
actually there. we make love
at least once a day and
she can make me laugh
with any sentence she cares
to say. Texas women have always
been immensely beautiful and
healthy, and besides that she’s
cleaned my refrigerator, my sink,
the bathroom, and she cooks and
feeds me healthy foods
and washes the dishes to top
that.
“Hank,” she told me,
holding up a can of grapefruit
juice, “this is the best of them
all.”
it says “Texsun—unsweetened
PINK grapefruit juice.”
she looks like Katharine Hepburn
must have looked while she was
in high-school, and I watch those
103 pounds
combing a yard and some change
of glinting reddish hair
before the mirror
and I can feel her inside of my
wrists and at the backs of my eyes,
and the toes and legs and belly
of me feel her and
the other part too,
and all of Los Angeles falls down
and weeps in joy,
the walls of the love parlors shake,
the ocean rushes in and she turns
to me and says, “damn this hair!”
and I say,
“yes.”
warm water bubbles
what I like
is when I’m in the bathtub
and I fart
and that fart is so bad
that I can smell the stink
of it
up through the water.
the pleasure of power:
Mahatma Gandhi dying.
the iris in drag.
love is wonderful
but so is the stench of the
innards,
the coming forth of the hidden
parts.
the fart. the turd. the death of
a lung.
bathtub rings, shit-rings in toilets
dying bulls dragged across Mexican dirt
Benito Mussolini and his whore Claretta
being hung by their heels
and torn to pieces by the mob—
these things have more gentle glory
than any Christ with His
perfectly-placed wounds.
I read (and I no longer know which side
did it) that in the Russian revolution
they’d catch a man, cut him open, nail
part of his intestine to a tree
then force him to run around and around
that tree, rolling his intestines about
the trunk. I’m no sadist. I’d probably
weep if I had to see it, probably go mad.
but I do know that we are much more than
we think we are
even though the romantics
concentrate upon the hate/and or/love of
the heart.
a fart in the bathtub contains a whole
essential history of the human race.
love is so wonderful.
so is the fart.
especially mine.
dying bulls being dragged across the Mexican
dirt and me in the bathtub
looking up at a 60-watt bulb and feeling all right.
a corny poem
we lived in a hotel next to a
vacant lot
where somebody was growing a
garden
which included these long
cornstalks
and we came out of the corner bar
at 2 A.M.
and started walking
toward our place
and when we got to the vacant
lot she said, “I want some
corn!”
and I followed her out and
I said, “shit, this stuff
isn’t ripe yet . . .”
“yes, it is . . . I’ve got to
have some corn . . .”
we were always hungry and
she started ripping off
these ears of corn and
stuffing them into her purse
and down her blouse and
I looked up the street and
saw the squad car coming
and I said, “it’s the cops,
run!”
they had the red lights on
and we ran toward our
apartment house, down the
front walk . . .
“HALT OR I’LL FIRE!”
and down the stairway to
the basement elevator
which happened to be there
and we closed the doors and
hit the button #4
as they stood down there
pushing buttons. we got
out and left the elevator
doors open, ran down to our
apartment, got in, locked the door
and sat in the dark
listening and drinking cheap
wine. we heard them out there
walking around. they finally
gave up but we left the lights
out and she boiled the ears of
corn, we sat in the dark a
long time listening to the ears
of corn boil and drinking the
cheap wine. we took the corn
out and tried to eat it. it
was undeveloped, we were nibbling
at murders, at miscarriages of
nature.
“I told you this shit wasn’t ready,”
I said.
“it’s ready,” she said, “for Christ’s
sake, eat it!”
“I’ve tried,” I said, “Lord God knows
how I’ve tried . . .”
“be glad you’ve got this corn,” she said,
“be glad you’ve got me.”
“the corn is green,” I said, “green as
caterpillars in April . . .”
“it’s good, it’s good, this corn is good,”
she said
and started throwing ears of it at me.
I threw the ears back.
we finished the wine and went to sleep.
in the morning when we awakened here were
these tiny little ears of corn all over the
rug and on the sofa and on the chairs.
“where’d this crap come from?” she asked.
“the Jolly Green Giant,” I said, “shit us
a tubful.”
“in this world,” she said, “a girl can
never tell what she’s going to wake up
with.”
“something hard,” I answered, “is better
than nothing.”
she got up and took a shower and I turned
over and went back to sleep.
the ladies of the afternoon
no more ladies knock on my door
at 3 A.M.
with ready bottle and ready body;
they arrive at 2:30 in the afternoon
and talk about the soul,
and they look better than the old girls
/>
did, but the understanding is clear—
no one-night stands,
I must buy the whole package;
they know Manet from Mozart, they know all the
Millers, and will sip on a bit of wine
but just a bit, and their breasts are vast and
firm
and their asses are sculptured by
sex-fiends;
they know the philosophers, the politicians and
the tricks;
they have minds and bodies,
and they sit and look at me and say,
“you seem a little nervous. is everything
all right?”
“o yes,” I say, “fine,” thinking what the hell is
this?
I’m not going to waste a month to get a pinch of
buttock;
and such terribly beautiful eyes, o yes,
the witches!
how they smile, knowing what you are
thinking—
to place them on a bed and be done with it—
fuck yes!—
but this is an inflationary age
and with them
you must pay first, during and
afterwards. it’s
the emancipated female, and I am no longer a
schoolboy, and I allow them to leave
untouched, most of them with a wrecked man or two
behind them already,
and still in their 20’s, and a meeting is arranged for later
in the week, and they leave
dangling their eternal price
behind them
like their beautiful asses,
but I find myself writing,
the next day,
“Dear K . . . : Your beauty and youth are simply too
much for me. I do not deserve
you, so therefore I ask that we break our relationship,
as small as that may have
been . . .
yours,
. . .”
then I smile, fold the letter, put it in the envelope, lick it
closed, add stamp,
and I walk down the street
to the nearest mailbox
keeping the emancipated woman as free as she
should be, and not doing too badly
toward myself
either.
tongue-cut
he lives in the back and comes to my door
carrying his shotgun in one hand.
“listen,” he says, “there was a guy sitting
on your couch on the porch while you were
gone. he didn’t act right. I asked him what
he wanted, he said he wanted to see you.
I told him you weren’t in. do you know a
tall black guy named ‘Dave’?”
“I dunno nobody like that . . .”
“I saw this guy on the street later and I
asked him what he was doing in the neighbor-
hood.”
“I don’t know no tall black named ‘Dave.’”
“I’ve been watching your place. I ran off a couple
of those Germans. you don’t want to see any Germans,
do you?”
“no, Max, I don’t like Germans, Frenchmen and especially
I don’t like Englishmen. Mexicans and Greeks are all
right but there is something I don’t like about the looks on their
faces.”
“there have been more Germans than any other kind.”
“run them off . . .”
“o.k., I will . . . when you leaving town again?”
“tomorrow.”
“tomorrow . . . ?”
“tomorrow, yes, and if you find some fucker sitting on
my porch couch, blow his god damned head off . . .”
“o.k., I will . . .”
“thanks, Max . . .”
“it’s all right . . .”
he walks back to his court in the back with his
shotgun and
goes inside.
“my god,” says Linda Lee, “you know what you’ve
done?”
“yes,” I say.
“he believes in you. when we come back there’ll be
a dead body on the porch.”
“all right . . .”
“don’t you remember when I took my day of silence?
you told him you had cut my tongue out . . . and he
accepted it matter of factly . . .”
“Max is the only real buddy I’ve
got . . .”
“you’re an accessory to the fact . . .”
“I don’t like uninvited guys sitting around on my porch
couch waiting for me . . .”
“suppose it’s some poet, some guy who admires your
work?”
“like I said, ‘Max is the only real buddy I’ve got.’
let’s start packing . . .”
“what happened to my green dress?”
she asks.
Venice, Calif., nov. 1977:
leary’s long gone and the drop-out area he created:
the junkies, the crazies, the fanatics, the general
rush of idiots have long ago been taken care of by
the institutions, including the institution of death.
lsd is almost out, speed is standard, reds are rare,
joints aren’t brave, coke and H are too expensive,
roller-skates and racquet-ball are in; less guitars,
less bongos, less blacks; the natives now huckster baggage
and small items from vans while their stereo sets
no longer play Bob Dylan, they have become minor
capitalists, nothing wearying, just a hype, and the
ten-speed bike, they ride the ten-speed bike as if
in the dream, all the revolutions are over but there is
still an anarchist or two under the palms, tamping their
pipes and planning to blow up some damn thing for no
damned reason and the sea goes in and out, out and in,
and over in Santa Monica the musclemen are still there,
although they aren’t the same musclemen, and the sea
goes in and out, and there’s no Vietnam to protest, hardly
anything to do, racquet-ball, roller-skates and ten-speed,
and fucking is almost a bore, it means trouble, you know,
and cheap wine is in, and you can use a do-it-yourself car
wash for twenty-five cents.
mirror
women at my dresser mirror
there have been so many women
at my dresser mirror
combing their hair
the comb catching
and I see in their eyes in
the mirror as they look
at me
stretched on the bed.
I am almost always on the bed
it’s my favorite place.
that love or even
relationships
stop
seems so very odd
but that new loves
new relationships
arrive
that’s lucky.
even though solitude is
good
loneliness seems
imperfect.
all those faces in the
mirror
I remember them.
blossoms of feeling and
humor,
I’ve been treated well
most of the
time.
the women are now
in front of other mirrors
and the men stretch on the beds
I’m sure—
conversing, or
silent, relaxing.
another woman uses
my mirror
her name is Linda Lee
she laughs at me
I have on a black and white
>
Japanese “happy coat.”
maybe she will stay in my
mirror.
head jobs
she’s still doing it.
she sculpts men’s heads
then goes to bed with
them
I guess to match the clay
with the flesh.
that’s how I met
her.
I didn’t object
but in such cases
you always feel that it is
you.
but afterwards
I found out
that I was not the
first
and after I began living with
her
I’d look at these sculpted heads
of men
on this table
and on top of the tv set
and
here and there
and I’d think,
my oh my.
and then she’d tell me,
“listen, you know whose head I’d
like to sculpt?”
“uh uh.”
“I’d like to sculpt big Mike
Swinnert . . . he has an interesting skull . . .
did you ever notice his mouth, his
teeth?”
“yes, I have . . .”
“I like his wife too. but I think I’d like
to do Mike first . . . you wouldn’t be
jealous, would you?”
“ah, no. I’ll go to the track or something
so you can concentrate . . .”
“it’s kind of embarrassing for me to
ask him. he’s your friend. would you
mind asking . . . ?”
Mike didn’t have a car so I picked him
up and drove him over. as I parked outside
he said, “listen, I can fuck her if I want
to, you know. do you mind if I fuck her?”
“well, I guess I would,” I said.
he gave me that glance: “all right,
for your sake, I won’t.”
I walked him into the clay and then went
back downstairs.
I drove out to the track and had
a terrible day at the
track . . .
I once walked through McArthur Park
with her as she picked out men with
interesting heads and
I went up to them and asked if she
might sculpt their heads. I even
offered them money. they all
refused, feeling that something was
wrong. I too felt that something was
wrong, especially with me.
it wasn’t much after that when
the sculptress and I
split.
she even moved out of town but
Storm for the Living and the Dead Page 7