The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems, 1946-1966 Read online

it’s raining, oh damn it all, it’s raining!

  and on the battlefield the rocks are wet and cool,

  the fine grains of rock glint moon-fire,

  and she curses under a small green hat

  like a crown

  and walks like a gawky marionette

  into the strings of rain.

  What to Do with Contributor’s Copies?

  (Dear Sir: Although we realize it is

  insufficient payment for your poems,

  you will receive 4 contributor’s copies,

  which we will mail directly to you or to

  anyone you wish.—Note from the Editor.)

  well, ya better mail one to M.S. or she’ll prob.

  put her pisser in the oven, she thinks she is hot

  stuff, and mabe she is, I sure as hell wd’t

  know

  then there is C.W. who does not answer his mail

  but is very busy teaching young boys how to write

  and I know he is going places, and since he is,

  ya better mail ’m one…

  then there’s my old aunt in

  Palm Springs nothing but money and I have

  everything but money…talent, a good singing voice,

  a left hook deep to the gut…send her a copy,

  she hung up on me, last time I phoned her drunk,

  giving evidence of need, she hung up

  on me…

  then there’s this girl in Sacramento who

  writes me these little letters…very depressed

  bitch, mixed and beaten like some waffle, making

  gentle intellectual overtures which I ignore,

  but send her a magazine

  in lieu of a hot poker.

  that makes 4?

  I hope to send you some more poems

  soon because I figure that

  people who print my poems are a little

  mad, but that’s all right. I am also

  that way. anyhow—

  I hope

  meanwhile

  you do not fold up

  before

  I

  do.

  c.b.

  Brave Bull

  I did not know

  that the Mexicans

  did this:

  the bull

  had been brave

  and now

  they dragged him

  dead

  around the ring

  by his

  tail,

  a brave bull

  dead,

  but not just another bull,

  this was a special

  bull,

  and to me

  a special

  lesson…

  and although Brahms

  stole his First from Beethoven’s

  9th.

  and although

  the bull

  was dead

  his head and his horns and

  his insides dead,

  he had been better than

  Brahms,

  as good as

  Beethoven,

  and

  as we walked out

  the sound and meaning

  of him

  kept crawling up my arms

  and although people bumped me and

  stepped on my toes

  the bull burned within me

  my candle of

  jesus,

  dragged by his tail

  he had nothing to do

  having done it all,

  and through the long tunnels and minatory glances,

  the elbows and feet and eyes, I prayed for California,

  and the dead bull

  in man

  and in me,

  and I clasped my hands

  deep within my

  pockets, seized darkness,

  and moved on.

  It’s Not Who Lived Here

  but who died here;

  and it’s not when

  but how;

  it’s not

  the known great

  but the great who died unknown;

  it’s not

  the history

  of countries

  but the lives of men.

  fables are dreams,

  not lies,

  and

  truth changes

  as

  men change,

  and when truth becomes stable

  men

  will

  become dead

  and

  the insect

  and the fire and

  the flood

  will become

  truth.

  O, We Are the Outcasts

  ah, christ, what a CREW:

  more

  poetry, always more

  POETRY.

  if it doesn’t come, coax it out with a

  laxative. get your name in LIGHTS,

  get it up there in

  8½ x 11 mimeo.

  keep it coming like a miracle.

  ah christ, writers are the most sickening

  of all the louts!

  yellow-toothed, slump-shouldered,

  gutless, flea-bitten and

  obvious…in tinker-toy rooms

  with their flabby hearts

  they tell us

  what’s wrong with the world—

  as if we didn’t know that a cop’s club

  can crack the head

  and that war is a dirtier game than

  marriage…

  or down in a basement bar

  hiding from a wife who doesn’t appreciate him

  and children he doesn’t

  want

  he tells us that his heart is drowning in

  vomit. hell, all our hearts are drowning in vomit,

  in pork salt, in bad verse, in soggy

  love.

  but he thinks he’s alone and

  he thinks he’s special and he thinks he’s Rimbaud

  and he thinks he’s

  Pound.

  and death! how about death? did you know

  that we all have to die? even Keats died, even

  Milton!

  and D. Thomas—THEY KILLED HIM, of course.

  Thomas didn’t want all those free drinks

  all that free pussy—

  they…FORCED IT ON HIM

  when they should have left him alone so he could

  write write WRITE!

  poets.

  and there’s another

  type. I’ve met them at their country

  places (don’t ask me what I was doing there because

  I don’t know).

  they were born with money and

  they don’t have to dirty their hands in

  slaughterhouses or washing

  dishes in grease joints or

  driving cabs or pimping or selling pot.

  this gives them time to understand

  Life.

  they walk in with their cocktail glass

  held about heart high

  and when they drink they just

  sip.

  you are drinking green beer which you

  brought with you

  because you have found out through the years

  that rich bastards are tight—

  they use 5 cent stamps instead of airmail

  they promise to have all sorts of goodies ready

  upon your arrival

  from gallons of whiskey to

  50 cent cigars. but it’s never

  there.

  and they HIDE their women from you—

  their wives, x-wives, daughters, maids, so forth,

  because they’ve read your poems and

  figure all you want to do is fuck everybody and

  everything. which once might have been

  true but is no longer quite

  true.

  and—

  he WRITES TOO.

  POETRY, of

  course. everybody

  wr
ites

  poetry.

  he has plenty of time and a

  postoffice box in town

  and he drives there 3 or 4 times a day

  looking and hoping for accepted

  poems.

  he thinks that poverty is a weakness of the

  soul.

  he thinks your mind is ill because you are

  drunk all the time and have to work in a

  factory 10 or 12 hours a

  night.

  he brings his wife in, a beauty, stolen from a

  poorer rich

  man.

  he lets you gaze for 30 seconds

  then hustles her

  out. she has been crying for some

  reason.

  you’ve got 3 or 4 days to linger in the

  guesthouse he says,

  “come on over to dinner

  sometime.”

  but he doesn’t say when or

  where. and then you find that you are not even

  IN HIS HOUSE.

  you are in

  ONE of his houses but

  his house is somewhere

  else—

  you don’t know

  where.

  he even has x-wives in some of his

  houses.

  his main concern is to keep his x-wives away from

  you. he doesn’t want to give up a

  damn thing. and you can’t blame him:

  his x-wives are all young, stolen, kept,

  talented, well-dressed, schooled, with

  varying French-German accents.

  and!: they

  WRITE POETRY TOO. or

  PAINT. or

  fuck.

  but his big problem is to get down to that mail

  box in town to get back his

  rejected poems

  and to keep his eye on all the other mail boxes

  in all his other

  houses.

  meanwhile, the starving Indians

  sell beads and baskets in the streets of the small desert

  town.

  the Indians are not allowed in his houses

  not so much because they are a fuck-threat

  but because they are

  dirty and

  ignorant. dirty? I look down at my shirt

  with the beerstain on the front.

  ignorant? I light a 6 cent cigar and

  forget about

  it.

  he or they or somebody was supposed to meet me at

  the

  train station.

  of course, they weren’t

  there. “We’ll be there to meet the great

  Poet!”

  well, I looked around and didn’t see any

  great poet. besides it was 7 a.m. and

  40 degrees. those things

  happen. the trouble was there were no

  bars open. nothing open. not even a

  jail.

  he’s a poet.

  he’s also a doctor, a head-shrinker.

  no blood involved that

  way. he won’t tell me whether I am crazy or

  not—I don’t have the

  money.

  he walks out with his cocktail glass

  disappears for 2 hours, 3 hours,

  then suddenly comes walking back in

  unannounced

  with the same cocktail glass

  to make sure I haven’t gotten hold of

  something more precious than

  Life itself.

  my cheap green beer is killing

  me. he shows heart (hurrah) and

  gives me a little pill that stops my

  gagging.

  but nothing decent to

  drink.

  he’d bought a small 6 pack

  for my arrival but that was gone in an

  hour and 15

  minutes.

  “I’ll buy you barrels of beer,” he had

  said.

  I used his phone (one of his phones)

  to get deliveries of beer and

  cheap whiskey. the town was ten miles away,

  downhill. I peeled my poor dollars from my poor

  roll. and the boy needed a tip, of

  course.

  the way it was shaping up I could see that I was

  hardly Dylan Thomas yet, not even

  Robert Creeley. certainly Creeley wouldn’t have

  had beerstains on his

  shirt.

  anyhow, when I finally got hold of one of his

  x-wives I was too drunk to

  make it.

  scared too. sure, I imagined him peering

  through the window—

  he didn’t want to give up a damn thing—

  and

  leveling the luger while I was

  working

  while “The March to the Gallows” was playing over

  the Muzak

  and shooting me in the ass first and

  my poor brain

  later.

  “an intruder,” I could hear him telling them,

  “ravishing one of my helpless x-wives.”

  I see him published in some of the magazines

  now. not very good stuff.

  a poem about me

  too: the Polack.

  the Polack whines too much. the Polack whines about his

  country, other countries, all countries, the Polack

  works overtime in a factory like a fool, among other

  fools with “pre-drained spirits.”

  the Polack drinks seas of green beer

  full of acid. the Polack has an ulcerated

  hemorrhoid. the Polack picks on fags

  “fragile fags.” the Polack hates his

  wife, hates his daughter. his daughter will become

  an alcoholic, a prostitute. the Polack has an

  “obese burned out wife.” the Polack has a

  spastic gut. the Polack has a

  “rectal brain.”

  thank you, Doctor (and poet). any charge for

  this? I know I still owe you for the

  pill.

  Your poem is not too good

  but at least I got your starch up.

  most of your stuff is about as lively as a

  wet and deflated

  beachball. but it is your round, you’ve won a round.

  going to invite me out this

  Summer? I might scrape up

  trainfare. got an Indian friend who’d like to meet

  you and yours. he swears he’s got the biggest

  pecker in the state of California.

  and guess what?

  he writes

  POETRY

  too!

  Poem for My 43rd Birthday

  To end up alone

  in a tomb of a room

  without cigarettes

  or wine—

  just a lightbulb

  and a potbelly,

  grayhaired,

  and glad to have

  the room.

  …in the morning

  they’re out there

  making money:

  judges, carpenters,

  plumbers, doctors,

  newsboys, policemen,

  barbers, carwashers,

  dentists, florists,

  waitresses, cooks,

  cabdrivers…

  and you turn over

  to your left side

  to get the sun

  on your back

  and out

  of your eyes.

  The Genius of the Crowd

  There is enough treachery, hatred,

  violence,

  Absurdity in the average human

  being

  To supply any given army on any given

  day.

  AND The Best At Murder Are Those

  Who Preach Against It.

  AND The Best At Hate Are Those

  Who Preach LOVE

  AND
THE BEST AT WAR

  —FINALLY—ARE THOSE WHO

  PREACH

  PEACE

  Those Who Preach GOD

  NEED God

  Those Who Preach PEACE

  Do Not Have Peace.

  THOSE WHO PREACH LOVE

  DO NOT HAVE LOVE

  BEWARE THE PREACHERS

  Beware The Knowers.

  Beware

  Those Who

  Are ALWAYS

  READING

  BOOKS

  Beware Those Who Either Detest

  Poverty Or Are Proud Of It

  BEWARE Those Quick To Praise

  For They Need PRAISE In Return

  BEWARE Those Quick To Censure:

  They Are Afraid Of What They Do

  Not Know

  Beware Those Who Seek Constant

  Crowds; They Are Nothing

  Alone

  Beware

  The Average Man

  The Average Woman

  BEWARE Their Love

  Their Love Is Average, Seeks

  Average

  But There Is Genius In Their Hatred

  There Is Enough Genius In Their

  Hatred To Kill You, To Kill

  Anybody.

  Not Wanting Solitude

  Not Understanding Solitude

  They Will Attempt To Destroy

  Anything

  That Differs

  From Their Own

  Not Being Able

  To Create Art