Storm for the Living and the Dead Read online

and those hard things like eyes,

  stones in the bottom of a rank pond,

  and I met her at Vince’s

  although what we spoke of is

  beyond me, and she took me to her

  apartment, a very nifty place

  with a couple of beds, a waxed

  kitchen floor, and a tv walking around

  like a tiger, and I dumped the steaks,

  the whiskey and the beer on the table,

  and later we ate, she made a good salad,

  and we had some drinks and watched the

  tiger walking and then I killed the thing

  and I told the bumblebee that I was dying,

  they had taken away my fountains,

  that any going on seemed senseless,

  drunkenness only evicted me from

  one plane of failure to another,

  but this she did not understand,

  and later on the bed

  she climbed upon me

  this bumblebee

  and I clenched the cheeks of her ass

  and it was real enough, she had the stinger

  turned down, and I said,

  beautiful o beautiful

  but I could do nothing,

  I was dying and she was dead,

  and later, dressed again,

  I said goodbye at the door,

  I said forgive me, and then the door

  was closed

  and I ran down the halls I ran

  outside for air

  those little stone eyes rattling in

  my head, and I got into my car

  and drove 20 miles south to the beach

  and I stood on the pier

  and watched the waves,

  imagined gigantic sea battles,

  I became salt and sand and sound,

  and soon the eyes went away

  and I lit a cigarette,

  coughed, and walked back

  toward the car.

  warble in

  warble in the blackbird of my night

  through pitchblende breathing,

  and may the counties raise their taxes

  and the axman itch in his sleep;

  warble in the blackbird of my night,

  and may the armies dress for dancing

  in the streets, and young girls

  kiss the fruits that fill their bellies;

  warble in the blackbird of my night,

  grunt and groan your Summers down,

  pick at lily stems when

  cancer’s heart burns love;

  warble in the blackbird of my night,

  warble in the note,

  my country’s tall for falling

  the rust of days

  from Moscow to New York

  adds a terror of hours

  but I do not complain

  the ten thousand kisses

  or the sticks and stones

  or broken Rome,

  but I wait your note,

  my fingers scratch

  this sunlit table.

  a trainride in hell

  GO GO GO GO GO! they yell

  and a monkey reaches up and twists out the light

  and the old redhead in the black dress

  lifts her skirts and dances

  GO GO GO GO GO!

  she wiggles her well-done hump of a tail

  and then the cop comes in through the vestibule

  and they cheer

  YAY!!! YAY!!!

  and he moves off with the redhead in front of him

  hair in her eyes, mouth twisted down in disgust,

  and they scream at him,

  YOU TAKE IT! HAVE A NICE PIECE! YAY!!!!

  it is a trainride in hell,

  the losers from the racetrack going one hundred miles home

  to jobs and no jobs, wives and no wives, lives and no lives,

  and the jack behind the bar has only beer,

  it floats in a trashcan of ice and he dumps the hot beer in—

  (YAY!!!! YAY!! they scream every time a new person enters the barcar)

  and grabs cans and opens and sells them as fast as the machine

  will punch holes . . .

  GO GO GO GO GO GO!!! they have found a new one

  and she dances (the whores get on at San Clemente

  where they have been sitting in the bars

  and they ride north to L.A.

  picking up what they can)

  and now she is rolling imaginary dice,

  no, they are real, there are quarters on the floor,

  she wiggles the dice, she wiggles her can and they scream

  GO GO GO GO GO!!!

  the cop comes through again and the dice disappear,

  he is smoking a cigarette and his cap is pushed back,

  he is grey and looks more drunkard than any of us,

  YAY!! YAY! they cheer him, and he walks on.

  an extrovert in a blue sports shirt

  moves around hugging and kissing the women,

  then a colored girl hangs from her knees from a crossbar,

  YAY! GO GO GO! YAY!

  a homosexual pushes his face in mine,

  “have you been to the racetrack?”

  I move away from him, walk to the bar and

  sweat my wait for a beer.

  YAY! GO GO GO GO!

  the colored girl dances opposite a chinaman,

  GO GO GO GO!

  I get my beer.

  outside, the buildings go by, people looking at television,

  in Berlin they fuck with their wall,

  people ponder issues of state with stones,

  here an old blond presses her flank against mine,

  I buy her a beer and a pack of Pall Malls,

  then she says, “come with me, I have to go to the can,”

  and we walk past the crowd,

  YAY! YAY! THERE THEY GO! GO GO GO GO!!!

  she is wearing slacks and her belly presses out from the top

  of them, and I wait outside the sign that says WOMEN,

  and I am sweating and impatient for the little the beer is doing

  and I empty the can and throw it in the vestibule

  and I drink hers too, and in the other car

  the people are tired and miserable, re-dreaming their losses,

  strung out in their seats, stuffed things,

  taken—again—by the world,

  and my whore comes out

  and we walk again into the barcar,

  yay! YAY! GO GO GO GO!

  DANCE, DANCE, DANCE!

  and she begins to dance wobbling what is left of the

  masquerade of her flesh and I leave her and go to the bar,

  GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO!

  there is still beer left, the jack is dragging it out of closets,

  the train sways sways doing 90 95 98

  the engineer a loser too

  popping a keg of beer between his legs,

  and I think of the battles fought through the centuries,

  the battles in small rooms, on battlefields,

  madman, genius, idiot, fake,

  all drawing blood, all wasted, wasted, wasted,

  the roaches will crawl everywhere

  over Schubert’s Symphony #9,

  in and out of our ears

  GO GO GO GO GO!!!

  and yet here

  this too

  means something

  and my whore is back and we drink

  until some crazy jack turns on the fire system

  and the lights go out

  and we are all under a cold shower

  yay! YAY! GO GO GO GO GO GO GO!

  somebody gets the water off, and the lights on

  and the women all have toadsheads

  the hair flat, mascara gone, eyelids gone, and they are giggling,

  purses and mirrors out, combs out, trying to hide from life again,

  and I look away, cool at last, get a couple more beers,

&n
bsp; find a dry cigarette and light up,

  and then like another sore

  Los Angeles is upon us

  and we are out of the doors

  running down the ramps

  YAY! GO, GO, GO, GO!

  there is a wheelchair in the aisle,

  and the extrovert in the blue sports shirt

  puts his friend in it,

  SICK MAN! SICK MAN! GANGWAY!

  HEY GANGWAY! DYING MAN!

  they move at a very rapid speed

  to put it blandly, HEY! GANGWAY! SICK MAN!

  oh, GO GO GO GO GO GO!

  oh, GO GO GO GO, GO, GO! YAYY!!

  a guard stops them and takes the wheelchair

  and then my friend in the blue shirt

  picks his friend up and puts him over his shoulder

  and hurries down the ramp,

  HEY! HEY! GANGWAY, DYING MAN!

  my whore is still there when I get to my car

  in the parking lot, she gets in

  and we drive off past the city hall

  and onto the freeway, and there is one more race

  to be run without a winner, and all around us drive

  people who have been to the baseball game

  or the beach or a movie or Aunt Sarah’s,

  and the whore says, “that Marmatz. I just don’t know.

  the kid won’t win for me.”

  20 minutes later she is in my room.

  GO, GO, GO, GO, GO, GO!

  yay.

  outside it is very still, and you can hear the bombers overhead,

  you can hear the mice making love; you can hear them digging

  the graves at the cemeteries, you can hear worms crawling into

  sockets, and the train we came in on, it sits very still now,

  it is quiet, the windows show nothing but moonlight,

  there is a sadness like old rivers, and it is more real

  than it has ever been.

  same old thing, Shakespeare through Mailer—

  into all instants before we like

  woodchoppers die I would like to

  think that what we’ve said will

  not necessarily follow us into

  that dark hole that is not love

  or sex or anything we know now,

  and when the troops marched into

  Turkey they ran through the first

  village raping the young girls

  and some of the old ones too,

  and Anderson and I found a café

  and sat there drinking listening

  to the air-arm overhead sinking

  in its fangs and I said it’s the

  same old thing Shakespeare through

  Mailer sticking his wife with the

  same thing but the wrong thing,

  and I thought if we could die here

  now in a minute like a camera

  snapped it would be much best

  all the mules and drunken ladies

  gone the bad novels march

  stuck in the mud it is best

  to die when you are ready

  like razorblades and beer-songs

  to an ancient Irish tune

  and then some Turk took a shot

  from the staircase and split my

  sleeve like a tight ass bending

  and I fired back like people in

  a play and I kept thinking

  Maria Maria I wonder if I’ll

  ever see Maria again, and

  immortality did not seem

  important at all.

  the rope of glass

  the old man was older than I

  on the train going south

  along the sea there

  then the train ran

  in between yellow cliffs and

  the sea was shut off and

  he told me,

  “in 1914 I took 400 mules

  from Missouri to Italy.

  those mules stank.

  it took more than one boat

  but I got ’em there.

  they used the mules to

  haul cannon up the mountain.

  the Austrians and the Italians

  fought the whole war over

  one mountain.”

  the train came out from between the

  cliffs, and down in the sea

  the swimmers swam

  boys came in like madness

  on surfboards. I had been reading

  the Racing Form.

  “we made bridges of rope from

  mountain to mountain

  always going up

  and the mules pulled the cannon

  across.”

  “bridges of rope?” I

  asked.

  “this was glass rope, nothing

  stronger, we tightened the works

  with a wheel like a molasses wheel

  and the mule and cannon went across.

  there was no air power then and

  when we got the cannon to the top

  we pointed them down and

  shelled the city below

  us.”

  I left him when the train reached the

  track, he was an old man

  looking out of a window.

  I walked across the bridge, a wooden one,

  over inland seawater that

  smelled of rot. I walked toward the

  track, it was hot, it was a Saturday in

  August 1964 and the world

  was still

  fighting.

  tough luck

  good things are around if you

  search them out.

  I remember this time in the German prison camp

  we got holda this queer

  they come in handy in times of no women

  and we beat the shit outa him first

  and then we passed him around

  and we had him sucking one guy’s dick

  while the other guy reamed him

  and even one of the German guards came in

  and took some—what a night!

  and that queer couldn’t walk for a month

  and he got shot and killed one night

  trying to bust through the wire

  and I remember Harry moaning

  as they took the fag past

  with those 2 holes in his head:

  “there goes the best piece I ever

  had!”

  sometimes when I feel blue I listen to Mahler

  no cream job, Harry,

  some hairy Moses like me is just dragging for shelter now

  like a picture of St. Louis in the snow, but, no, it’s hot:

  enough oil for the fan, and

  too lazy to change the dirty sheets,

  too crazy to care.

  I used to write mother about razorblades against my throat

  about how awful faces on people looked

  how their bodies were like hardened tar

  but dear old mama died of cancer while I was lying with

  a 300-pound whore who swam in all the way from

  Costa Rica

  and I had to get a job in the railroad yards,

  shit yeah, and I keep thinking that the last razor against my throat

  will understand the divinity of steel and

  the undivinity of

  waiting.

  I haven’t written, Harry, no cream,

  because I’ve got this place in the back, I mean there’s a

  back window to this room

  and I look out and there’s this woman always hanging washing

  about 35

  and when she bends over to get her panties and bras and bedsheets

  and nylons from the basket,

  ah—

  it’s all there, Harry,

  and I’m looking

  EYES LEAPING THROUGH THE DIRTY WINDOWPANES

  and I’m like a pimply high-school kid again

  never had a piece of ass like that,

  here s
he is in starched gingham,

  red and white squares

  and that ass big as the Empire State Building

  looking me in the mouth

  and the sun coming down on everything

  and in the corner of my room

  a square of melting butter in a dish

  a piece of dry bread

  and a spider in the corner

  sucking Pepsi-Cola from a fly—

  cream, Harry, CREAM!

  and

  sometimes when I get blue I listen to Mahler

  or read a little Artaud

  or I go out in the yard where they have this turtle

  and when nobody is looking

  I burn his neck with my cigar

  and when the head goes in the shell I poke the cigar in

  the hole like a hot

  dick, but you know, really, there’s nothing being written,

  yet I keep getting these rejects,

  I write good stuff too, Harry, no cream—

  true genius just usually isn’t recognized in a

  lifetime

  and so I am not discouraged—

  right now I am listening to “The March of the Smugglers”

  from the Carmen Suite by Bizet,

  what terrible dripping shit,

  I think I’ll try that monkey Malone

  at Wormwood—he prints Bukowski

  so he’ll print anybody. by the way, Bukowski lives in the room

  across the hall,

  a jerk, the other day we are all at Dirty Jane’s room,

  we’re drinking port wine

  and Bukowski snatches Dirty Jane’s drawers right off

  and goes to it

  right in front of

  everybody. I mean, he ate

  it. if he can do it

  I can do it too. and he had the nerve to tell me,

  “the next time I see you burn that turtle

  I am going to kill you!”

  and he was so drunk I could have knocked him down with a

  flyswatter.

  no cream job, Harry, I haven’t written in months

  but the next thing I write has got to

  go, I can feel the swelling in me like the quills on a cat’s cock

  jammed in a turkey’s ass.

  the sun is raiding my temples

  and the wallpaper dances with naked girls after one

  A.M.

  I see finer and finer ways of shooting a solid line to

  the moon, no shit, boy, this is

  it, the typewriter is my machinegun

  and RIP TAP TAP TAP RIP

  ALL THE SKY WILL FALL and beautiful girls

  with eyes like bursting heaven

  will hold my banana; everything is here—

  the waste of sewers, the dull mountains,