did you say?”
I’ve got to get ready,
whiten my hair,
forget to
shave.
I want you to know me
when you see
me:
I’m now the old fart
in the neighborhood
and you can’t tell me
a damn thing I don’t already
know.
respect your elders,
sonny, and get the
hell out of my
way!
another day
having the low-down blues and going
into a restaurant to eat.
you sit at a table.
the waitress smiles at you.
she’s dumpy. her ass is too big.
she radiates kindness and sympathy.
live with her 3 months and a man would
know some real agony.
o.k., you’ll tip her 15%.
you order a turkey sandwich and a
beer.
the man at the table across from you
has watery blue eyes and
a head like an elephant.
at a table further down are 3 men
with very tiny heads
and long necks
like ostriches.
they talk loudly of land development.
why, you think, did I ever come
in here when I have the low-down
blues?
then the waitress comes back with the sandwich
and she asks you if there will be anything
else?
and you tell her, no no no, this will be
fine.
then somebody behind you laughs.
it’s a cork laugh filled with sand and
broken glass.
you begin eating the sandwich.
it’s something.
it’s a minor, difficult,
sensible action
like composing a popular song
to make a 14-year-old
weep.
you order another beer.
jesus, look at that guy
his hands hang down almost to his
knees and he’s
whistling.
well, time to get out.
pick up the bill.
tip.
go to the register.
pay.
pick up a toothpick.
go out the door.
your car is still there.
and there are the 3 men with heads
and necks
like ostriches all getting into one
car.
they each have a toothpick and now
they are talking about
women.
they drive away first.
they drive away fast.
they’re best, I guess.
it’s an unbearably hot day.
there’s a first-stage smog alert.
all the birds and plants are dead
or dying.
you start the engine.
tabby cat
he has on bluejeans and tennis shoes
and walks with two young girls
about his age.
every now and then he leaps
into the air and
clicks his heels together.
he’s like a young colt
but somehow he also reminds me
more of a tabby cat.
his ass is soft and
he has no more on his mind
than a gnat.
he jumps along behind his girls
clicking his heels together.
then he pulls the hair of one
runs over to the other and
squeezes her neck.
he has fucked both of them and
is pleased with himself.
it has all happened
so easily for him.
and I think, ah,
my little tabby cat
what nights and days
wait for you.
your soft ass
will be your doom.
your agony
will be endless
and the girls
who are yours now
will soon belong to other men
who didn’t get their cookies
and cream so easily and
so early.
the girls are practicing on you
the girls are practicing for other men
for someone out of the jungle
for someone out of the lion cage.
I smile as
I watch you walking along
clicking your heels together.
my god, boy, I fear for you
on that night
when you first find out.
it’s a sunny day now.
jump
while you
can.
the gamblers
the young boys at the track, what are they
doing here?
6 or 7 of them running around, tearing up
their tickets, saying,
“shit! god damn! fuck it!”
they whirl about, they look like virgins,
they are going to bet again.
it’s the same after each race:
“shit! god damn! fuck it!”
they leave after the last race,
skipping down the stairways like fairies,
they wear sneakers, little t-shirts, tight
pants.
put all 6 or 7 of them together and you
won’t get 800 pounds.
they’ve never been to jail, they live
with their parents; they’ve never had to
work 8 to 5.
what are they doing here at the race track?
I mean, it’s bad enough that my horse
fell in the 4th, snapped his left foreleg
and had to be shot.
I mean, any damn fool can go to the
race track and most damn fools do,
but these little boys hollering
“shit! god damn! fuck it!”
well, there’s no war right now
we can’t stick them into a uniform just yet
but wait a while.
the crowd
they love to huddle and chat away the
night as I pour them wine.
my wife doesn’t seem to mind and my mother-
in-law fits in nicely.
little exchanges as the hours have
their arms and legs chopped off,
their heads tossed away.
I can’t believe they are
sitting there.
I can’t believe their words or their
laughter.
I have no idea why they are here.
I have invited nobody.
I am the husband.
I am to act civilized.
I am to behave like them.
but I will live past them.
this night will not turn me into them.
there was a time when I used to run such
out the door.
but then I would hear over and over
what a beast I had been.
so now I sit with them,
attempt to listen.
I even lend a word now and then.
they have no idea how I feel.
I am like a surgeon cutting into the rot,
examining a malignancy.
strangely, there is nothing to be learned.
“good night, good night, drive
carefully.”
after they leave
the place reshapes itself,
the cats come out of hiding,
I have my first peaceful
moment.
my wife and I sit together.
I say nothing of the
departed.
the moon shines through
the glass doors
and the life left in me
gently surfaces
.
I have survived them
one
more
time.
trouble in the night
she awakens me almost every night,
“Hank! HANK!”
shaking me…
“yeh?” I ask.
“don’t you hear that?”
“go to sleep…”
“THERE’S SOMETHING ON THE STAIRS!”
“all right…”
I get up, my feet are numb, my legs buckle
at the knees.
I have a switchblade, and also a stun
gun that can freeze a man for
15 minutes.
I bother with neither
just walk to the stairway
naked
not caring if I find a 9 foot
monster,
almost hoping to find one.
—halfway down the stairway
it’s only the cat
clawing an old newspaper to
pieces.
he only wants to get out
into the night
and I let him
out.
I go back up.
sometimes I think my woman lives with me only
because she is afraid to live
alone.
“it was the cat,” I say, climbing in.
“ARE YOU SURE?”
sometimes I have to conduct
a real room-to-room search
with all the lights on.
I stand naked outside of closet doors
and say,
“o.k., come on out, big bad thing!”
but this night I refuse.
“go to sleep,” I say, “and
in the morning
we’ll check everything out.”
I can feel her rigid
beside me
listening to the sounds of the
night but I am soon
asleep.
I dream that I can fly.
I flap my arms and I can fly gracefully
through the air.
below me men and women are running.
they curse me and throw objects.
they want me to come down.
they want my box of matches,
my camera and my
car keys.
but what does she want?
3 old men at separate tables
I am
one of them.
how did we get here?
where are our ladies?
what happened to
our lives and years?
this appears to be a calm Sunday
evening.
the waiters move among us.
we are poured water, coffee, wine.
bread arrives, armless, eyeless bread.
peaceful bread.
we order.
we await our orders.
where have the wars gone?
where have, even, the tiny agonies
gone?
this place has found us.
the white table cloths are placid ponds,
the utensils glimmer for our
fingers.
such calm is ungodly but
fair.
for in a moment we still remember the
hard years and those to come.
nothing is forgotten, it is merely put
aside.
like a glove, a gun, a
nightmare.
3 old men at separate tables.
eternity could be like this.
I lift my cup of coffee,
the centuries enduring
me,
nothing else matters so
sweetly
now.
the singer
this then
is the arena
forevermore.
this then is the arena
where you must
succeed or fail.
you have had some
success here
but they expect more
than that
in this arena.
there have been defeats too,
befuddling defeats.
there is no mercy in this
arena,
there is only victory or
defeat,
something living or something
dead.
this arena
is neither just
nor good.
there is no permanent
escape from this
arena.
and each temporary escape
has a permanent price.
neither drink nor love
will
see you through.
in this arena
now
stretching your arms
looking out the window
watching cats and leaves and shadows
thinking of vanished women and old automobiles
while Europe runs up and down your rug
you can only sing popular melodies
in the last of your mind.
stuck with it
this is plagiarism, of course, sitting here with
my hands and my feet,
sitting here lighting another deadly
cigarette,
then pouring more deathly booze into
myself,
and this is plagiarism
because I used to read Pound to my
drunken prostitute, my first
love.
I just didn’t know, still don’t.
I buried her, went on to
others,
then got married in Las Vegas,
and lost.
what we’d all like to do, of
course, is to cut through the
fog of centuries
and get down into where it
shines and blazes,
blazes and shines,
roars.
I gave it a shot,
missed.
I go to CoCo’s,
get my Senior Citizen’s
Dinner,
good deal, soup or salad,
the beverage, the main
course, cornbread
too.
and I sit with the
other old
farts,
listen to them
talk,
not bad, really, they’ve also
been burned down to the
nub.
now I sit here
plagiarizing, still probably
zapped by the Key West
Cuba Kid Fisherman
who opted out over his
last orange juice
somewhere in
Idaho.
we all steal.
but I’ll tell you
the plagiarism I like best
is this pouring of the
cabernet sauvignon,
1988
from the
Alexander Valley.
and once I held a woman’s
hand as she was dying of
cancer in a small room on
some 2nd floor
and the stink of it spread
for a thousand yards
everywhere
and I tried not to breathe.
my mother, your mother,
anybody’s mother
and she said, dying,
“Henry, why do you write
those terrible
words?”
action on the corner
a man hit a pregnant woman
he seemed to know her
knocked her down on the sidewalk
outside the Mexican food place
she was wearing a black dress with
orange dots
she fell on her back and screamed
she had a bloody nose
and the man was fat
powerful
in workingman’s clothes
and a crowd gathered:
“what did you
&
nbsp; hit her for?”
“it’s not right! you shouldn’t do
that!”
he just stood there
looking down at her
as she sobbed
the blood from her nose
running into her
mouth.
more people gathered
there must have been
15 people.
“somebody do something!” a woman
said.
nobody did.
just then an old battered black car
with the headlights on
at noon
came down the street at
70 m.p.h.
a bearded man was driving
swerving to avoid a car
he flashed by with 2 wheels
momentarily up on the
curb near the
crowd.
there were shouts:
“LOOK OUT!”
“JESUS!”
then he got the wheels back down
on the street
fired through the
red light
without hitting a thing and
was gone.
when the crowed recovered
and looked around again
the pregnant woman
was still on the
sidewalk
she looked almost
asleep
but the man was
gone.
“the son-of-a-bitch got
away,” somebody
said.
one man looked up at the
sky
as if looking for an invasion
from space.
the cook from the Mexican cafe
stood in his
dirty apron.
then somebody moved forward and
helped the pregnant woman
to her feet.
no guru
I keep getting phone calls from the
helpless and the lonely and the
depressed.
yes, I tell them, that happens to all of
us.
oh, you’re writing poems now? I’ll buy your
book.
women? you lose them and you find
them. be strong. eat well.
sleep late, if
possible.
What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire Page 20