New Poems Book Three Read online

  to most folks

  but which is good enough

  especially when you can

  watch someone like Morry

  walk away with the seat of his pants

  jammed up in the crack of his

  ass.

  APPARITIONS

  I thought I saw the one with long

  brown hair standing by the coffee stand.

  she had on dark shades.

  I ducked and got on the escalator

  and went down to the first

  floor and mingled with the

  crowd.

  a few days later

  I thought I saw the redhead.

  it looked like her ass from behind

  and when her head turned I’m

  almost sure it was her

  face.

  I quickly changed floors,

  went all the way over to the

  clubhouse.

  it might all be my imagination

  that I saw 2 of the women

  that I once thought I couldn’t

  live

  without.

  but

  at least

  I haven’t run into

  the other

  5.

  SPEED

  every day on the freeway I get into a race with some

  fool.

  I win most of them.

  but now and then I hook up with some fellow who is

  totally insane

  and then I

  lose.

  each day as I drive the freeway I think, not today, today

  I am going to have an

  easy pleasant

  ride.

  but somehow it happens and it’s always on the

  Pasadena Freeway

  with its snake-like curves which enhance the

  danger and exhilaration.

  these same curves make it almost impossible for the

  police to

  check your rate of speed

  so they seldom cruise the

  Pasadena Freeway.

  here I am 65 years old

  dueling with young boys

  making reckless lane changes

  charging into the tiniest gaps between moving

  steel

  the landscape roaring past in the

  rain

  sun

  fog.

  it takes an eye for split-second

  timing

  but there’s only so far

  any of us

  can go.

  IT’S DIFFICULT TO SEE YOUR OWN DEATH APPROACHING

  saw two writers sitting at a table in a café

  the other day—not bad fellows really, either with

  the word or the way.

  it had been several years since I had last

  seen them and as I walked over I noticed that they both

  looked old—their faces sagged and one’s

  hair was white:

  it would appear that the gentle art of poetry

  had not treated them any better than working the

  tomato fields, and oddly, when I greeted them,

  they stammered and could barely respond,

  they just sat there at the table like a

  pair of old coots on a hot summer

  afternoon.

  I took my leave, went back to my table,

  smiled at my wife, pleased that I hadn’t

  grown old like that, no,

  not at all.

  I enjoyed the view of the harbor as I looked out at the

  brightly painted ships docked there, rising and falling

  gently with the tide

  and as I raised my glass to toast my eternal

  youth

  the voice across from me said, “Hank, you

  better take it easy, in just another week

  you’re going to be

  65.”

  MADE IN THE SHADE (HAPPY NEW YEAR)

  Popcorn Man, he don’t give a damn,

  hates his brother, beats his mother,

  he don’t give a damn,

  Popcorn Man.

  Popcorn Man, he don’t have a

  conscience, he don’t wear a rubber,

  hates his mother, beats his brother,

  Popcorn Man.

  Popcorn Man,

  he’ll wipe your ass with a frying pan,

  Popcorn Man,

  he’ll steal your arms, burn your

  meat, suck out your eyeballs as a

  Popcorn treat,

  Popcorn Man.

  he don’t give a damn,

  he don’t give a damn,

  that Popcorn Man,

  he really don’t give a damn,

  that Popcorn Man.

  ONE FOR WOLFGANG

  today was Mozart’s 237th birthday

  as tonight the sounds from the harbor

  drift in over my little

  balcony.

  I suck the world in through this cigar,

  then blow it out.

  I’m calm, I’m tired, I’m calm and

  tired.

  Mozart, what do you think?

  why do the gods tease us as

  we approach the final

  darkness?

  yet, who’d want to stay here

  FOREVER?

  a day at a time is difficult

  enough.

  so I guess everything is all right.

  anyway, happy

  237th birthday.

  and many more.

  I’d like to treat you to

  a fine dinner tonight

  but the other people

  at all the other tables

  wouldn’t

  understand.

  they never

  have.

  NIGHT UNTO NIGHT

  Barney, you knew right away

  when they halved the

  apple

  that your part would contain the

  worm.

  you knew you’d never dream of conquistadors or

  swans.

  each man has his designated place and yours is at

  the end of the line,

  a long long line,

  an almost endless line

  in the worst possible weather.

  you’ll never be embraced by a lovely lady

  and your place in the scheme of things

  will go unrecorded.

  there are men put on earth not to live but to die

  slowly and badly or

  quickly and

  uselessly.

  the latter are the lucky ones.

  Barney, I don’t know what to say.

  it’s the way

  things work.

  it’s pure chance.

  you were born unlucky and unloved,

  tossed into a boiling cauldron.

  you will be as soon

  forgotten as last week’s dream.

  Barney, fair doesn’t matter.

  every heroic effort fails.

  Barney, you have a billion names

  and as many faces.

  you’re not alone.

  just look

  around.

  NOTES ON SOME POETRY

  to feign real emotion, yours or the world’s,

  is, of course, unforgivable

  yet many poets

  past and present

  are adept at

  this.

  these are poets

  who write what I call the

  “comfortable, clever poem.”

  these poems are sometimes written by professors

  of literature who have been on the job for too

  long,

  by the overly ambitious,

  by young students of the game

  or the like.

  but I too am guilty:

  last night I wrote 5 comfortable, clever

  poems.

  and if you aren’t a professor of literature,

  overly ambitious,

  a you
ng student of the game

  or the like,

  this can also be caused by too much

  success with your writing,

  or even be the result of a life gone

  cozy.

  to make matters worse, I mailed out

  those 5 comfortable, clever poems

  and I wouldn’t be surprised if

  3 or 4 of them were accepted for

  publication.

  none of this has anything to do with

  real emotion and guts,

  it’s just word-slinging for the sake of

  it

  and it’s done almost everywhere by

  almost

  everybody

  we forget what we are really about

  and the more we forget this

  the less we are able to write a

  poem that

  stands and screams and laughs on

  the page.

  we just become like the many writers who make

  poetry magazines so dull and

  unreadable and

  pretentious.

  we might just as well not write at all

  because we’ve become

  fakes, cheaters, poem-hustlers.

  so look for us in the next issue of

  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse,

  look for us in the table of contents,

  turn to any of our precious poems

  and yawn your life

  away.

  THE BUZZ

  very few go there every day,

  it’s hard to beat the 18% take here in California.

  I’ve not only been there every day, I’ve been

  there every day for decades.

  I’ve been there for so long that I know

  many jocks’ agents and trainers.

  we talk

  at the track or on the phone.

  and they’ve been over to my place.

  none of them are very good horseplayers

  compared to me.

  there are some other sad players out there.

  they come day after day and lose and lose.

  where they get their money, I don’t know.

  their clothing is old, dirty, ill-fitting, their shoes

  run down.

  they lose and lose and lose

  and finally vanish

  to be replaced by a host of new losers.

  but I am a fixture.

  I will come in the worst weather, the rain

  falling in one gray sheet of water,

  I will pull into the parking lot, my wipers working hard.

  the attendants know me.

  “another lousy fucking day, huh Hank?”

  it’s a bore between races, they

  make you wait too long, they suck the life

  out of you.

  you lose 25 or 30 minutes between

  races, time you’ll never get back,

  it’s gone, it’s gone, it’s gone.

  most races are 6 furlongs, which means

  the real action lasts somewhere between

  a minute and 9 or ten seconds.

  but when your horse is closing on the

  wire, that’s a feeling hard to

  compare.

  people need a continual war of sorts, some action, the

  buzz.

  that’s when

  you come alive for a moment!

  some get it at the track.

  some get it in other ways.

  many others seldom get it.

  you’ve got to have it now and then,

  you’ve got to.

  a shot of fire!

  an explosion!

  after a photo finish

  your horse’s number going up

  first

  on the tote board!

  it’s the roar of the impossible.

  it’s as stunning as the opening of a flower.

  and you standing there, feeling

  that.

  A SIMPLE KINDNESS

  every now and then

  towards 3 a.m.

  and well into the second

  bottle

  a poem will arrive

  and I’ll read it

  and immediately attach to it

  that dirty word—

  immortal.

  well, we all know that

  in this world now

  that

  immortality can be a very

  brief experience

  or

  in the long run:

  non-existent.

  still, it’s nice to play with

  dreams of

  immortality

  and I set the poem aside in a

  special place

  and

  go on with the

  others

  —to find that poem again

  in the morning

  read it

  and

  without hesitation

  tear it

  up.

  it

  was nowhere near

  immortal

  then

  or

  now

  —just a drunken piece

  of

  sentimental

  trash.

  the best thing about self-rejection

  is that it

  saves that obnoxious duty

  from being

  somebody else’s

  problem.

  GOOD TRY, ALL

  did I fail those fragile tulips?

  I think back over my checkered past

  remembering all the ladies I’ve known who

  at the beginning of the affair

  were already discouraged and unhappy

  because of their miserable

  previous experiences with other

  men.

  I was considered just another

  stop along the way

  and maybe I

  was and maybe I wasn’t.

  the ladies had long been used and misused

  while undoubtedly adding their share of

  abuse to the

  mix.

  they were always

  chary at first

  and the affairs were much like reading an

  old newspaper over and over

  again (the obituary or help-wanted

  sections)

  or it was like listening to a familiar

  song

  too often recalled and sung again

  until the melody and words became

  blurred.

  their real needs were obscured by their

  fears

  and I always arrived too late with too

  little.

  yet sometimes there were moments

  however brief

  when kindness and laughter

  came breaking

  through

  only to quickly dissolve into the

  same inevitable dark

  despair.

  did I fail those fragile tulips?

  I can’t think of any one of those ladies

  I’d rather not have known

  no matter what stories they tell of me

  now

  as they edge again into

  the lives of new-found

  lovers.

  PROPER CREDENTIALS ARE NEEDED TO JOIN

  I keep meeting people, I am introduced to

  them at various gatherings

  and

  either sooner or later

  I am told smugly that

  this lady or

  that gentleman

  (all of them young and fresh of face,

  essentially untouched by life)

  has given up drinking;

  that

  they all have

  had a very difficult time

  of late

  but

  NOW

  (and

  the NOW

  is what irritates me)

  all of them are pleased and proud

/>   to have finally

  overcome all that alcoholic

  nonsense.

  I could puke on their feeble

  victory. I started drinking at the age of

  eleven

  after I discovered a wine cellar

  in the basement of a boyhood

  friend

  and

  since then

  I have done jail time on 15 or

  20 occasions,

  had 4 D.U.I.’s,

  have lost 20 or 30 terrible

  jobs,

  have been battered and left for

  dead in several skid row

  alleys, have been twice

  hospitalized and

  have experienced numberless wild and

  suicidal

  adventures.

  I have been drinking, with

  gusto, for 54 years and intend to

  continue to

  do so.

  and now I am introduced

  to these young,

  blithe, slender, unscathed,

  delicate creatures

  who

  claim to have vanquished the

  dreaded evil of

  drink!

  what is true, of course, is

  that they have never really experienced

  anything—they have just

  dabbled and they have just

  dipped in a toe, they have only

  pretended to really drink.

  with them, it’s like saying that

  they have escaped hell-fire by blowing out

  a candle.

  it takes real effort

  and many years to get damn good

  at anything

  even being a drunk,

  and once more

  I’ve never met one of these reformed young drunks

  yet

  who was any better for being

  sober.

  SILLY DAMNED THING ANYHOW

  we tried to hide it in the house so that the

  neighbors wouldn’t see.

  it was difficult, sometimes we both had to

  be gone at once and when we returned

  there would be excreta and urine all

  about.

  it wouldn’t toilet train

  but it had the bluest eyes you ever

  saw

  and it ate everything we did

  and we often watched tv together.

  one evening we came home and it was

  gone.

  there was blood on the floor,

  there was a trail of blood.

  I followed it outside and into the garden

  and there in the brush it was,

  mutilated.

  there was a sign hung about its severed

  throat:

  “we don’t want things like this in our

  neighborhood.”

  I walked to the garage for the shovel.

  I told my wife, “don’t come out here.”

  then I walked back with the shovel and

  began digging.

  I sensed

  the faces watching me from behind

  drawn blinds.

  they had their neighborhood back,