The People Look Like Flowers At Last Read online

  knocked out his brains.”

  “you saw it?”

  “I saw it. the next time the train stopped

  they dumped him out, they dumped him in some

  high grass. then the train started up

  again.”

  I gave the kid another beer.

  “when the police find those guys in rags, no

  identification, wine-faced, they say ‘just another wino,’

  they don’t even follow up, they just

  forget it.”

  we talked most of the night

  about the road. I told him a few stories of my

  own. then I went to bed. he slept on the

  couch. I went into the bedroom with the woman and

  kid. slept.

  when I got up to piss in the morning

  Red was sitting in a chair

  reading yesterday’s paper.

  “I gotta go,” he said, “I can’t sleep

  anymore, but I had a good night, some good

  talk. thanks.”

  “me too, Red. easy now.”

  “sure.”

  then he was out the door and down the street,

  gone.

  back in the bedroom she asked, “is Red gone?”

  “yeah.”

  “where’d he go?”

  “I don’t know. Texas. Hell. Boston. anywhere.”

  the little girl woke

  up: “I wanna bottle!”

  “can you get her a bottle? you’re up.”

  “sure.”

  I went into the kitchen and mixed some

  milk. and everywhere things were working out there,

  cruel and not cruel, spiders and bums

  and soldiers and gamblers and madmen and

  factotums and fags and firemen, like that,

  and I went back in and handed the girl the bottle

  got back into bed

  and listened to the kid sucking on the thing—

  suck suck suck,

  and soon we’d have our own

  breakfast.

  it is not much

  I suppose like others

  I have come through fire and sword,

  love gone wrong,

  head-on crashes, drunk at sea,

  and I have listened to the simple sound of water running

  in tubs

  and wished to drown

  but simply couldn’t bear the others

  carrying my body down three flights of stairs

  to the round mouths of curious biddies;

  the psyche has been burned

  and left us senseless,

  the world has been darker than lights-out

  in a closet full of hungry bats,

  and the whiskey and wine entered our veins

  when blood was too weak to carry on;

  and it will happen to others,

  and our few good times will be rare

  because we have a critical sense

  and are not easy to fool with laughter;

  small gnats crawl our screen

  but we see through

  to a wasted landscape

  and let them have their moment;

  we only asked for leopards to guard

  our thinning dreams.

  I once lay in a

  white hospital

  for the dying and the dying

  self, where some god pissed a rain of

  reason to make things grow

  only to die, where on my knees

  I prayed for LIGHT,

  I prayed for l*i*g*h*t,

  and praying

  crawled like a blind slug into the

  web

  where threads of wind stuck against my mind

  and I died of pity

  for Man, for myself,

  on a cross without nails,

  watching in fear as

  the pig belches in his sty, farts,

  blinks and eats.

  the 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 any bull,

  this was a special

  bull,

  and to me

  a special

  lesson learned…

  and although Brahms

  stole his First from Beethoven’s

  9th

  and although

  the bull

  was dead,

  his head and his horns and

  his intestines 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 jostled me and

  stepped on my toes

  the bull burned within me

  my candle of

  light;

  dragged by his tail

  he had nothing to do with anything

  now having escaped it all,

  and down through the long tunnel, surrounded by

  elbows and feet and eyes, I prayed for Tijuana

  and for the dead bull

  and man

  and me,

  the blue kissing waters

  enjoying the knot of pain,

  and I clenched my hands

  deep within my

  pockets, seized darkness

  and moved on.

  the people, no

  startling! such determination in the

  dull and uninspired

  and the copyists.

  they never lose the fierce gratitude

  for their uneventfulness,

  nor do they forget to laugh

  at the wit of slugs;

  as a study in diluted senses

  they’d make any pharaoh

  cough up his beans;

  in music they prefer the monotony of

  dripping faucets;

  in love and sex they prefer each other

  and therefore compound the

  problem;

  the energy with which they propel their

  uselessness

  (without any self-doubt)

  toward worthless goals

  is as magnificent as

  cow shit.

  they produce novels, children, death,

  freeways, cities, wars, wealth, poverty, politicians

  and total areas of grandiose waste;

  it’s as if the whole world is wrapped in dirty

  bandages.

  it’s best to take walks late at

  night.

  it’s best to do your business only on

  Mondays and

  Tuesdays.

  it’s best to sit in a small room

  with the shades down

  and

  wait.

  the strongest men are the fewest

  and the strongest women die alone

  too.

  you might as well kiss your ass goodbye

  I finally met him. he sat in an old robe

  an
d bitched for 5 hours.

  “look,” he said, “don’t trust Krause,

  Krause will rob you. he owes me 10,000 dollars

  and there’s no way I can get it out

  of him. a real bastard.”

  “Sir,” I said, “when you wrote that first novel,

  it was so humorous, the truth is always so funny,

  you know, the way people act, like blind mechanical things,

  killing without reason, marvelous how you got it all

  down.”

  an old woman came in and set a pot of tea in front of

  him. “they smashed my motorcycle, stole my manuscripts,

  cleaned me out. they would have killed me but I wasn’t

  here. they called me a fascist, claimed I sold the plans

  to the Maginot Line to the Krauts. now where the hell would I ever

  get the plans to the Maginot

  Line?”

  he poured his tea. lifted the cup. it was too hot

  or something. he spit it out on the rug, some of it

  on my shoes and pants.

  “Sir,” I asked, “that first novel, did you really eat your own

  flesh as a young writer? were you that

  hungry? by god, that was some novel, I’ll never

  forget it!”

  “Martha!” he called. “Martha!”

  the old woman came in.

  “you forgot the lemon and sugar, you old hag!”

  the old woman ran out

  for the lemon and sugar.

  “the government claims I owe them 70,000 dollars! they don’t bother Krause. the son-of

  a-bitch rides around in a Cadillac and owns a twelve

  acre estate. don’t ever trust Krause. he’s a bloodsucker. he’s sucked

  the bodies and talents of at least 3 dozen writers dry. he’s like a giant

  spider, a tarantula!”

  “Krause has never asked me for anything…”

  “if he does, you might as well kiss your ass

  goodbye!”

  Martha ran in with the lemon and sugar.

  “you damned washed-up whore! I oughta whip your ass!”

  “Sir,” I said, “you’re looked up to

  as one of the strongest writers since 1900.”

  “don’t trust Krause! a bloodsucker!”

  he bitched for 5 hours. and I listened. then his head fell back,

  across the top of his rocker, and I saw that

  famous hawk profile. then he began

  to snore.

  he was just an old man in an old

  bathrobe.

  I stood up. Martha came in.

  “I’m glad I had a chance to meet him,”

  I told her.

  “I try to remember he was once a great writer,”

  she told me.

  “he’s still kind of humorous,”

  I told her.

  “I don’t think so,” she said,

  “you see, I’m his

  wife.”

  “goodnight,” I

  said.

  “goodnight,” she

  replied.

  purple glow

  I see the high-heeled

  shoes and a dried white rose

  lying on the bar

  like a clenched

  fist.

  whiskey makes the heart beat faster

  but it sure doesn’t help the

  mind and isn’t it funny how you can ache just

  from the deadly drone of

  existence?

  I see this

  nudie dancer running along the top of

  the bar

  shaking what she thinks is

  magic

  with all those faces staring

  up from overpriced

  drinks.

  and me? being there? no shit,

  I really didn’t care about

  her but I love the pulse of

  the loud flat music thumping

  in the purple glow, something

  about it all: I hardly

  ever felt better.

  I watch her, the purple

  doll so

  sad so cheap so

  sad, you would never want to

  bed down with her or even hear her

  speak, yet in that drunken place

  you would

  like to hand your heart to her

  and say

  touch it

  but then

  give it back.

  she dances so fiercely now in

  the purple glow,

  purple does something strange to me:

  there was a night

  30 years ago

  I was drunk, true, and there was

  a purple Christ in a glass box

  outside a little church and I

  smashed the glass, I broke

  the glass, and then I reached in and touched

  Christ but

  He was only a dummy and I heard the

  sirens then and started

  running.

  well, my mind has never been the same

  since and the typing helps but you can’t

  type all the time, so the nudie dancer now

  breaks what heart I have left and I

  don’t know why but I start giving money

  to everybody in the bar, I give a five to this

  guy, a ten to that, I think maybe it might

  wake them to the wisdom

  of it all

  but they don’t even say

  “thanks,” they just think I’m a

  fool.

  the manager comes up and tells me

  I’m 86’d, I hand him a

  twenty, he takes

  it.

  two friends

  have been sitting at a back

  table, they help me up and out of the

  bar.

  I think the situation is very

  funny but they are

  angry:

  where’s your car?

  where’s your fucking

  car?

  I say, I

  dunno.

  too fucking bad, they

  say and

  leave me sitting alone on an

  apartment house

  step.

  I light up and smoke a cigarette,

  then get up and begin the long

  walk, a walk I know will

  entail at least a couple of

  hours

  to find my car (past experience)

  but I know that when I

  find it, the rush of

  happiness will be

  all I need

  and that I will then be able to

  begin my life all over

  again.

  one thousand dollars

  all of my knowledge about horse racing

  told me that this was a sure bet.

  I bet one thousand to win.

  the horse had post one

  at 6 furlongs.

  the bell rang and they came

  out of the gate.

  my horse turned left

  ran through the fence

  fell down and

  died

  right there

  at 7/5.

  when I tell people this story

  they don’t say

  anything.

 
sometimes there’s nothing to say

  about

  death.

  grip the dark

  I sit here

  drunk now

  listening to the

  same symphonies

  that gave me

  the will to go on

  when I was 22.

  40 years later

  they and I are not quite so

  magical.

  you should have

  seen me then

  so

  lean

  no

  gut

  I was

  a gaunt string of a

  man:

  blazing, strong,

  insane.

  say one wrong

  word

  to me

  and I’d crack you right

  there.

  I didn’t want to be

  bothered with

  anything or

  anyone.

  I seemed to be

  always on my way to some

  cell

  after being booked for

  doing things

  on or off the

  avenue.

  I sit here

  drunk now.

  I am

  a series of

  small victories

  and large defeats

  and I am as

  amazed

  as any other

  that

  I have gotten

  from there to

  here

  without committing murder

  or being

  murdered;

  without

  having ended up in the

  madhouse.

  as I drink alone

  again tonight

  my soul despite all the past

  agony

  thanks all the gods

  who were not

  there

  for me

  then.

  the dwarf with a punch

  this is many years later