The People Look Like Flowers At Last Read online

  and I still can’t figure it out

  but it was in New York

  and New York has its own rules and

  anyhow, I am sitting around in one of those

  places

  with many round tables

  with their tough and terrible knights;

  me, I don’t feel so good, as usual,

  neither tough nor terrible,

  just rotten,

  and I am sitting with some woman

  with some kind of hood over her head,

  she is half crazy

  but that doesn’t matter.

  she has a name, Fay,

  I think it was,

  and we have been drinking, going from place to

  place, and we went in there,

  and it seemed terribly

  lively

  because there was a dwarf about 3

  feet tall

  and the dwarf was walking around

  drunk

  and he’d stop at a table

  and look at a man

  and say,

  “well, what YOU got to say?”

  and then the dwarf would crush him one in the mouth,

  only the dwarf had very good hands and

  one hell of a punch.

  then everybody would laugh and the dwarf would

  go to the bar

  for another drink.

  “keep him away from me, Fay!” I told her.

  “uh? whatzat? what? who?”

  “keep him away from me!”

  “what? waz? away?”

  the dwarf unloaded on another guy

  and everybody laughed,

  even I laughed. that dwarf could punch.

  he had a lot of

  practice.

  he danced to the bar

  doing a little soft shoe

  then he noticed a sailor

  very blond and young and

  scared.

  the kid pissed in his pants

  and smiled at the

  dwarf.

  the dwarf chopped him a

  good one;

  his next smile was a

  bit bloody.

  then the dwarf put another on his chin

  knocking the sailor over

  backward in his

  chair, out

  cold.

  k.o.! all hail the

  champion!

  then the dwarf saw

  me. the man at the table in

  back.

  “keep him away from me, Fay!”

  I said.

  “lez have another drink!” she said.

  (she had a full drink in front of her.)

  he came up to me

  in all 3 feet of his

  glory.

  “well, what YOU got to say?”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t have anything to say

  that he would understand.

  “nothing, hah?”

  I nodded. it came. I felt my chair rock, then

  settle again on its legs. shots of red and yellow and

  blue light followed, then laughter.

  sitting there

  I swung back.

  his poor 3 feet slid along the floor like a

  rag doll

  and then they were down on me

  it seemed like a dozen men

  (but it might have been 3 or 4)

  and I caught some more

  good ones.

  then I was thrown outside,

  I got up

  and found a hanky

  and tried to stop

  the worst of the blood

  and Fay was there,

  “you coward, you hit that little

  man!”

  I walked down the street

  but she was right there with me

  and we went into the next place

  and I looked around

  and seeing that everyone was more than

  4 feet tall,

  I ordered 2 more

  drinks.

  the elephants of Vietnam

  first they used to, he told me,

  gun and bomb the elephants,

  you could hear their screams over all the other sounds;

  but you flew high to bomb the people,

  you never saw it,

  just a little flash from way up

  but with the elephants

  you could watch it happen

  and hear how they screamed;

  I’d tell my buddies, listen, you guys

  stop that,

  but they just laughed

  as the elephants scattered

  throwing up their trunks (if they weren’t blown off)

  opening their mouths

  wide and

  kicking their dumb clumsy legs

  as blood ran out of big holes in their bellies.

  then we’d fly back,

  mission completed.

  we’d get everything:

  convoys, dumps, bridges, people, elephants and

  all the rest.

  he told me later, I

  felt bad about the

  elephants.

  breakfast

  waking up on those mornings in the drunk tank,

  busted lower lip, loose teeth, brains swimming in

  a cacophony not yours, with

  all those strange others swathed in rags, noisy

  now in their mad sleep, with nothing for

  company but a stopped-up toilet,

  a cold hard floor

  and somebody else’s

  law.

  and there was always one early voice, a loud voice:

  “BREAKFAST!”

  you usually didn’t want it

  but if you did

  before you could gather your thoughts

  and scramble to your feet

  the cell door was slammed

  shut.

  now each morning it’s like a slow contented

  dream, I find my slippers, put them on,

  do the bathroom bit, then walk down the

  stairway in a swirl of furry bodies, I am

  the feeder, the god, I clean the cat bowls, open

  the cans and talk to them and they get excited and

  make their anxious sounds.

  I put the bowls down as each cat moves to

  its own bowl, then I refill the water dish

  and watch all five of them eating

  peacefully.

  I walk back up the stairway to the bedroom

  where my wife is still asleep, I crawl beneath

  the sheets with her, place my back to the sun

  and am soon asleep again.

  you have to die a few times before you can really

  live.

  inverted love song

  I could scream down 90 mountains

  to less than dust

  if only one living human had eyes in the head

  and heart in the body,

  but there is no chance,

  my god,

  no chance.

  rat with rat dog with dog hog with hog,

  play the piano drunk

  listen to the drunk piano,

  realize the myth of mercy

  stand still

  as even a child’s voice snarls

  and we have not been fooled,

  it was only that we wanted to believe.

  Salty Dogs

 
; got to the track early to study the odds and here’s

  this man coming by

  dusting seats. he keeps at his work, dusting, most

  probably glad to have his simple job.

  I’m one of those who doesn’t think there is much difference

  between an atomic scientist and a man who cleans the seats

  except for the luck of the draw—

  parents with enough money to point you safely toward a more

  generous life.

  “how’s it going?” I asked him as he dusted by.

  “o.k., how about you?” he asked.

  “I do all right with the horses. it’s with the women I lose.”

  he laughed. “yeah. a man has two or three bad experiences,

  it really sets him back.”

  “I don’t mind two or three,” I told him, “I mind

  eleven or twelve.”

  “man, you must know something by now. who do you like in the

  first?”

  I told him that Salty Dog was reading 4-to-1 and should

  finish one-two. (45 minutes later it did.) but it wasn’t 45

  minutes later yet. the man went on dusting and I thought of all my

  rotten jobs and how glad I was to have them. for a

  while. then it was a matter of quitting or getting fired.

  both felt good.

  it’s when you live with one woman for more than two

  years you know what’s bound to happen only you don’t know

  exactly why. it’s not in the chart. it’s in past performance,

  not in the chart.

  my friend, dusting the seats, he didn’t know exactly why either.

  I walked over for a coffee. the slim girl behind the

  counter was a brunette with a tiny blue flower in her hair,

  nice eyes, nice smile. I paid for my coffee.

  “good luck,” she said.

  “you too,” I said.

  I took the coffee to my seat, the wind came up from the west,

  I took a sip and waited for the action, thinking of

  many things, too many things. the scene dissolved into grass and

  trees and the dirt track and I remembered dirty shades in

  dirty rooming houses flapping back and forth in a light wind,

  and I thought about dirty troops plundering some new village,

  and about my old girlfriends unhappy again with their new men.

  I sat and drank my coffee and waited for the first

  race.

  brainless eyes

  in the bitter morning

  high roses grow

  and the frogs celebrate

  victory.

  in the empty balloon of night

  nothing grows;

  the night

  gnaws and belches

  and victory is celebrated only

  by indecent ladies

  with spread legs

  and brainless eyes.

  at noon,

  say at noon,

  something happens

  finally.

  the signal changes

  the traffic moves through.

  life itself is not the miracle.

  that pain should be so constant,

  that’s the miracle—

  that hammer of the thing

  when you can’t even scream or weep

  and it sits all over you

  looking into your eyes

  eating your flesh.

  morning night and noon

  the traffic moves through

  and the murder and treachery

  of friends and lovers

  and all the people

  move through you.

  pain is the joy of knowing

  the unkindest truth

  that arrives without

  warning.

  life is being alone

  death is being alone.

  even the fools weep

  morning night and noon.

  unbelievable

  I’ve been going to the track for

  decades

  but I saw something new

  today.

  2 horses threw their riders.

  usually when a horse throws

  his or her rider

  he (or she) continues to run

  in the same direction as

  the other horses.

  but

  this time

  both horses turned

  and began to run in the

  opposite direction,

  in other words,

  toward the oncoming

  field.

  it was a 5/8ths mile

  track

  and they were

  approaching one another

  pretty fast.

  the announcer warned

  the riders

  and as they came

  around the last curve

  and into the stretch

  here came the other

  2 horses right at

  them.

  there was no screaming.

  there was a dead

  silence.

  you could hear the hooves

  pounding the dirt.

  then one horse swung

  wide

  and went outside the

  field.

  the other headed straight

  into it

  and passed right through

  between the other

  horses.

  the other horses reached

  the wire.

  mine had won.

  but the judges held an

  inquiry and it was

  declared

  no contest.

  I didn’t give a

  damn.

  I kept seeing that horse

  rushing at the field

  and passing right through,

  untouched.

  a miracle.

  war and peace

  to experience

  real agony

  is

  something

  hard

  to write about,

  impossible

  to understand

  while it

  grips you;

  you’re

  frightened

  out of

  your

  wits,

  can’t sit

  still,

  move

  or even

  go

  decently

  insane.

  and then

  when your

  composure

  finally

  returns

  and you are

  able to

  evaluate

  the

  experience

  it’s almost as

  if it

  had happened

  to

  somebody

  else

  because

  look at

  you

  now:

  calm

  detached

  say

  cleaning your

  fingernails

  looking through

  a

  drawer

  for

  stamps

  applying

  polish

  to your
r />   shoes

  or

  paying the

  electric

  bill.

  life is

  and is not

  a

  gentle

  bore.

  the harder you try

  the waste of words

  continues with a stunning

  persistence

  as the waiter runs by carrying the loaded

  tray

  for all the wise white boys who laugh at

  us.

  no matter. no matter,

  as long as your shoes are tied and

  nobody is walking too close

  behind.

  just being able to scratch yourself and

  be nonchalant is victory

  enough.

  those constipated minds that seek

  larger meaning

  will be dispatched with the other

  garbage.

  back off.

  if there is light

  it will find

  you.

  all the little girls

  it was up in northern California

  and he stood in the pulpit

  and he had been reading for some time

  he had been reading many poems about

  Mother Nature and the inherent goodness

  of man.

  he believed that everything was

  all right with the world.

  and you couldn’t blame him:

  he was a tenured professor who had never

  been in jail or in a whorehouse;

  who had never had his used car die

  on the freeway; who

  had never needed more than

  three drinks during his wildest

  evening;

  who had never been rolled, flogged or

  mugged;

  who had never been bitten by a dog;

  who got regular gracious letters from Gary

  Snyder, and whose face was

  kindly, unmarked and

  tender. finally,

  his wife had never betrayed him,

  nor had his luck.

  he said, “I’m just going to read

  three more poems and then I’m going

  to step down from here and let

  Chinaski read.”

  “oh no,” said all the

  little girls in their pink and blue

  and white and orange and lavender

  dresses. “oh no,