On Love
Page 7
one night,
the last night of the week:
it went down while I was in action.
she took it personally.
I am now down to one woman
and I don’t cheat on her.
when you find you can get fucked
easily
you find you don’t need to go
about
simply fucking women
and using their toilets and their
showers and their towels
and their insides,
their thoughts, their
feelings.
I now have a nice garden outside.
she planted it.
I water it daily.
potted plants hang from ropes.
I am at peace.
she stays 3 days a week
then goes back to her house.
the mailman asks me, “hey, what
happened to all your women? you
used to have a couple of them
sitting on your porch when I came
by . . .”
“Sam,” I tell him, “I was beginning
to feel like a dildo . . .”
the liquor delivery man comes by:
“hey, man! where are all the broads?
you’re alone tonight . . .”
“all the more to drink,
Ernie . . .”
I’ve done the town, I’ve drunk the
city, I’ve fucked the country, I’ve
pissed on the universe.
there’s little left to do but
consolidate and ease out.
I have a nice garden.
I have a lovely woman.
I no longer feel like a
dildo.
I feel like a man.
it feels much
better, it
does. don’t worry
about me.
a place to relax
to be a young fool and poor and ugly
doesn’t make the walls look so good.
so many evenings, examining walls
with nothing to drink
nothing to smoke
nothing to eat
(we drank my paychecks fast).
she always knew when to leave.
she put me through her college—
she gave me my masters and my Ph.D.,
and she always came back,
she wanted a place to relax
somewhere to hang her clothes.
she claimed I was very funny,
I made her laugh
but I was not trying to be
funny.
she had beautiful legs and she was
intelligent but she just didn’t care,
and all my fury and all my humor and
all my madness only entertained
her: I was performing for her
like some puppet in some hell of my own.
a few times when she left I had enough
cheap wine and enough cigarettes
to listen to the radio and look at the
walls and get drunk enough to get away
from her.
but she always came back to try me
again.
I do remember her especially.
other better women have made me feel as
bad
as those evenings
taking that two mile walk home from work
turning up the alley
looking up at the window
and finding the shades dark.
she taught me the agony of the damned and
the useless.
one wants good weather, good luck, good
dreams.
for me it was a long chance in a big field,
the time was cold and the longshot didn’t
come in.
I buried her five years after I met her,
seldom seeing her in the last three.
there were only four at the grave:
the priest
her landlady
her son and myself.
it didn’t matter:
all those walks up the alley
hoping for a light behind the shade.
all those dozens of men who had fucked her
were not there
and one of the men who had loved her
was: “My crazy stockroom boy from the
department store,” she called me.
snap snap
oh, the ladies can get snappish
sticking their hands into the sink
yanking at sheets
working their trowels through the earth
near the radish patch
sitting in the auto with you
as you drive along.
oh, the ladies can get snappish
discussing
God and the movies
music and works of art
or what to do about the cat’s
infection.
the snappishness spreads to
every area of conversation
the voice-pitch remains at
high-trill.
what happened to the nights
before the fire
when they were all sweetness
of ankle and knee
pure of eye
long hair combed out?
of course, we knew that wasn’t
real
but the snappishness is.
love is too
but it’s stuck somewhere
between the crab apple tree
and the sewer.
the judge is asleep in his
chambers and
nobody’s guilty.
for the little one
she’s downstairs singing, playing her
guitar, I think she’s happier than
usual and I’m glad. sometimes my
mind gets sick and I’m cruel to her.
she weighs one hundred and one
pounds
has small wrists and
her eyes
are often purely sad.
sometimes my needs
make me selfish
a backwash takes my
mind
and I’ve never been
good
with apology.
I hear her singing
now it’s
very late night
and from here
I can see the
lights of the city
and they are sweet as
ripe garden fruits
and this room is
calm
so strange
as if magic had
become normal.
hello, Barbara
25 years ago
in Las Vegas
I got married
the only time.
we were only
there an hour.
I drove all the
way up and all
the way back
to L.A.
and I still
didn’t feel
married and
I continued
to feel that
way for 2 and
½ years until
she divorced
me.
then I found
a woman
who had ants
for pets and
fed them
sugar.
I got her
pregnant.
after that
there were
many other
women.
but the
other day
this man
who has been
looking into
my past
said, “I’ve
got the
phone number
of your
x-wife.”
I put it
in my
dresser drawer.
then I got
drunk one
&n
bsp; night
pulled the
number out
and
phoned her.
“hey, baby,
it’s me!”
“I know it’s
you,” she said
in that same
chilly voice.
“how ya
doin’?”
“all right,”
she answered.
“you still
livin’ on that
chicken ranch?”
“yes,” she
said.
“well, I’m
drunk.
I just thought
I’d give you
a little
call.”
“so you’re
drunk again,”
she said in
that same
chilly voice.
“yes. well,
all right,
I’m saying
goodbye now . . .”
“goodbye,” she
said and hung
up.
I walked over
and poured a
new drink.
after 25 years
she still
hated me.
I didn’t think
I was that
bad.
of course,
guys like me
seldom
do.
Carson McCullers
she died of alcoholism
wrapped in the blanket
of a deck chair
on an overseas
steamer
all her books of
terrified loneliness
all her books about
the cruelty
of the loveless lover
were all that were left
of her
as the strolling vacationer
discovered her body
notified the captain
and she was dispatched
somewhere else
upon the ship
as everything else
continued
as
she had written it.
Jane and Droll
we were in a small shack in
central L.A.
there was a woman in bed
with me
and there was a very large
dog
at the foot of the bed
and as they slept
I listened to them
breathe
and I thought, they depend
upon me.
how very curious.
I still had that thought
in the morning
after our breakfast
while backing the car
out of the drive
the woman and the dog
on the front step
sitting and watching
me
as I laughed and waved
and as she smiled and
waved
and the dog looked
as I backed into the
street and disappeared
into the city.
now tonight
I still think of them
sitting on that
front step
it’s like an old
movie—35 years
old—that nobody ever
saw or understood
but me
and even though the
critics would dub it
ordinary
I like it
very much.
we get along
the various women I have lived with have attended
rock concerts, reggae festivals, love-ins, peace
marches, movies, garage sales, fairs, protests,
weddings, funerals, poetry readings, Spanish classes,
spas, parties, bars and so forth
and I have lived with this
machine.
while the ladies attended affairs, saved the whales,
the seals, the dolphins, the great white shark,
while the ladies talked on the telephone
this machine and I lived
together.
as we live together tonight: this machine, the 3
cats, the radio and the wine.
after I die the ladies will say (if asked): “he
liked to sleep, to drink; he never wanted to go
anywhere . . . well, the racetrack, that stupid
place!”
the ladies I have known and lived with have been
very social, jumping into the car, waving, going
out there as if some treasure of great import
awaited them . . .
“it’s a new punk group, they’re great!”
“Allen Ginsberg’s reading!”
“I’m late for my dance class!”
“I’m going to play scrabble with Rita!”
“it’s a surprise birthday for Fran!”
I have this machine.
this machine and I live together.
Olympia, that’s her name.
a good girl.
almost always
faithful.
it was all right
she’s a good old girl now.
she’s fattened and grayed.
we were lovers many years
ago,
there was a child,
there is a child,
now a woman.
this woman gave me
a tape
of her mother
talking about poetry
and her life and
reading her
poems.
an hour-long tape.
I listened to it.
unfortunately
the poetry wasn’t
very good
but most poetry
isn’t.
she went on talking
about
poetry workshops,
various influences—
family, friends, her
husband (I
wasn’t) who didn’t
seem to like her
writing poetry.
she kept a notebook
near her bed
and one in her
purse.
she talked about
this and that.
I was happy for her
that they allowed her
on a radio station
for an hour.
I’d heard worse
from professors who
had made
literature
their trade.
and as I listened
to her voice
it was the
same voice
I’d heard
20 years ago
when I dropped in
on her place
on Vermont Avenue
and found her
feeding sugar
to the ants
in her room
and there were
many ants
there
but she had
a great body
then
and I was
hard-up as
hell.
it was a
good hour,
Fran.
my walls of love
it’s on nights like this, I get back what I
can.
the living is hard, the writing is free.
were that the women were as easy
but they wore always much the same:
they liked my writing in finished book-
form
but there was always something about the
actual typing
working toward the new
which bothered them . . .
I wasn’t competing with them
but they got competitive with me
in forms and styles which I didn’t consider
either original or creative
they were certainly
astonishing enough.
now they are set loose
with themselves and the others
and have new problems
in another way.
all those lovelies:
I’m glad I’m with them in spirit
rather than in the flesh
as now I can bang this fucking machine
without concern.
eulogy to a hell of a dame
some dogs who sleep at night
must dream of bones
and I remember your bones
in flesh
and best
in that dark green dress
and those high-heeled bright
black shoes,
you always cursed when you
drank,
your hair coming down, you
wanted to explode out of
what was holding you:
rotten memories of a
rotten
past, and
you finally got
out
by dying,
leaving me with the
rotten
present;
you’ve been dead
28 years
yet I remember you
better than any of
them;
you were the only one
who understood
the futility of the
arrangement of
life;
all the others were
displeased with
trivial segments,
carped
nonsensically about
nonsense;
Jane, you were
killed by
knowing too much.
here’s a drink
to your bones
that
this dog
still
dreams about.
love
I’ve seen old pairs
sitting in rockers
across from each other
being congratulated and celebrated