Love Is a Dog From Hell Page 4
what the hell’s the matter with
you?
listen, I said, I’ve got to leave.
you stay here. I’ll be right back.
I’m going, she said. I love you but you’re
crazy, you’re doomed.
she got her purse and slammed the door.
it’s probably some deeply-rooted childhood fuckup
that makes me vulnerable, I thought.
then I left my place and got into my volks.
I drove north up Western with the radio on.
there were whores walking up and down
both sides of the street and Madge looked
more vicious than any of them.
225 pounds
we were in bed and
she started to fight:
“you son of a bitch! you just wait a minute,
I’ll get you!”
I began laughing:
“what’s the matter? what’s the matter?”
“you son of a bitch!” she screamed.
I held her hands as she squirmed.
she was a couple of decades younger than I
a health food freak.
she was very strong.
“you son of a bitch! I’ll get you!”
she screamed.
I rolled on top of her with my 225 pounds and
just layed it there on her.
“uugg, oooo, my God, that’s not fair, oooo, my
God!”
I rolled off and walked into the other room and
sat on the couch.
“I’ll get you, bastard,” she said, “you just
wait!”
“just don’t bite it off,” I said, “or you’ll make
a half dozen women very unhappy.”
she climbed up on the headboard of my bed
(it did have a flat though narrow surface)
and sat perched there watching the news on
tv.
the tv faced the bedroom and it illuminated
her as she sat up there on the
headboard.
“I thought you were sane,” I said, “but you’re
just as crazy as the rest of them.”
“be quiet,” she said, “I want to watch the
news!”
“look,” I said, “I’ll…”
“SHUSH!” she said.
and there she was up on the headboard of my bed
really watching the news. I accepted her that
way.
turnabout
she drives into the parking lot while
I am leaning up against the fender of my car.
she’s drunk and her eyes are wet with tears:
“you son of a bitch, you fucked me when you
didn’t want to. you told me to keep phoning
you, you told me to move closer into town,
then you told me to leave you alone.”
it’s all quite dramatic and I enjoy it.
“sure, well, what do you want?”
“I want to talk to you, I want to go to your
place and talk to you…”
“I’m with somebody now. she’s in getting a
sandwich.”
“I want to talk to you…it takes a while
to get over things. I need more time.”
“sure. wait until she comes out. we’re not
inhuman. we’ll all have a drink together.”
“shit,” she says, “oh shit!”
she jumps into her car and drives off.
the other one comes out: “who was that?”
“an ex-friend.”
now she’s gone and I’m sitting here drunk
and my eyes seem wet with tears.
it’s very quiet and I feel like I have a spear
rammed into the center of my gut.
I walk to the bathroom and puke.
mercy, I think, doesn’t the human race know anything
about mercy?
one for old snaggle-tooth
I know a woman
who keeps buying puzzles
Chinese
puzzles
blocks
wires
pieces that finally fit
into some order.
she works it out
mathematically
she solves all her
puzzles
lives down by the sea
puts sugar out for the ants
and believes
ultimately
in a better world.
her hair is white
she seldom combs it
her teeth are snaggled
and she wears loose shapeless
coveralls over a body most
women would wish they had.
for many years she irritated me
with what I considered her
eccentricities—
like soaking eggshells in water
(to feed the plants so that
they’d get calcium).
but finally when I think of her
life
and compare it to other lives
more dazzling, original
and beautiful
I realize that she has hurt fewer
people than anybody I know
(and by hurt I simply mean hurt).
she has had some terrible times,
times when maybe I should have
helped her more
for she is the mother of my only
child
and we were once great lovers,
but she has come through
like I said
she has hurt fewer people than
anybody I know,
and if you look at it like that,
well,
she has created a better world.
she has won.
Frances, this poem is for
you.
communion
horses running
with her miles away
laughing with a
fool
Bach and the hydrogen bomb
and her miles away
laughing with a
fool
the banking system
bumper jacks
gondolas in Venice
and her miles away
laughing with a
fool
you’ve never quite
seen a stairway before
(each step looking at you
separately)
and outside
the newsboy looking
immortal
as the cars go by
under a sun
like an enemy
and you wonder
why it’s so hard
to go crazy—
if you’re not already
crazy
until now
you’ve never seen a
stairway that looked like
a stairway
a doorknob that looked like
a doorknob
and sounds like these sounds
and when the spider comes out
and looks at you
finally
you don’t hate it
finally
with her miles away
laughing with a
fool.
trying to get even:
we’d had any number of joints and some
beer and I was on the bed stretched out
and she said, “look, I’ve had 3 abortions
in a row, real fast, and I’m sick of
abortions, I don’t want you to stick that
thing in me!”
it was sticking up there and we were both
looking at it.
“ah, come on,” I said, “my girlfriend fucked
2 different guys this week and I’m trying to
get even.”
“don’t get me involved in your domestic
horseshit! now what I want you to
do is
to BEAT that thing OFF while I WATCH!
I want to WATCH while you beat that thing
OFF! I want to see it shoot JUICE!”
“o.k. get your face closer.”
she got it closer and I spit on my palm
and began working.
it got bigger. just before I was ready I
stopped, I held it at the bottom
stretching it,
the head throbbed
purple and shiny.
“oooh,” she said.
she ducked her mouth over it, sucked at
it and
pulled away.
“finish it off,” I said.
“no!”
I whacked away and then stopped again
at the last moment and held it at the
bottom and waved it all around the
bedroom.
she eyed it
fell upon it again
sucked
and pulled away.
we alternated the process
back and forth
again and again.
finally I just pulled her off
the chair
onto the bed
rolled on top of her
stuck it in
worked it
worked it
and came.
when she walked back out of
the bathroom she said,
“you son of a bitch, I love you,
I’ve loved you for a long time.
when I get back to Santa Barbara
I’m going to write you. I’m
living with this guy but I hate
him, I don’t even know what I’m
doing with him.”
“o.k.,” I said, “but you’re up
now. can you get me a glass of
water? I’m dry.”
she walked into the kitchen and
I heard her remark that
all my drinking glasses were
dirty.
I told her to use a
coffee cup. I
heard the water running and I
thought, one more fuck
I’ll be even
and I can be in love with my girlfriend again—
that is
if she hasn’t slipped in an
extra
and she probably
has.
Chicago
“I’ve made it,” she said, “I’ve come
through.” she had on new boots, pants
and a white sweater. “I know what I
want now.” she was from Chicago and
had settled in L.A.’s Fairfax district.
“you promised me champagne,”
she said.
“I was drunk when I phoned. how about
a beer?”
“no, pass me your joint.”
she inhaled, let it out:
“this isn’t very good stuff.”
she handed it back.
“there’s a difference,” I said, “between
making it and simply becoming hard.”
“you like my boots?”
“yes, very nice.”
“listen, I’ve got to go. can I use
your bathroom?”
“sure.”
when she came out she had on a
large lipstick mouth. I hadn’t seen
one of those since I was a boy.
I kissed her in the doorway
feeling the lipstick rub off on my
lips.
“goodbye,” she said.
“goodbye,” I said.
she went up the walk toward her car.
I closed the door.
she knew what she wanted and it wasn’t
me.
I know more women like that than any
other kind.
quiet clean girls in gingham dresses…
all I’ve ever known are whores, ex-prostitutes,
madwomen. I see men with quiet,
gentle women—I see them in the supermarkets,
I see them walking down the streets together,
I see them in their apartments: people at
peace, living together. I know that their
peace is only partial, but there is
peace, often hours and days of peace.
all I’ve ever known are pill freaks, alcoholics,
whores, ex—prostitutes, madwomen.
when one leaves
another arrives
worse than her predecessor.
I see so many men with quiet clean girls in
gingham dresses
girls with faces that are not wolverine or
predatory.
“don’t ever bring a whore around,” I tell my
few friends, “I’ll fall in love with her.”
“you couldn’t stand a good woman, Bukowski.”
I need a good woman. I need a good woman
more than I need this typewriter, more than
I need my automobile, more than I need
Mozart; I need a good woman so badly that I
can taste her in the air, I can feel her
at my fingertips, I can see sidewalks built
for her feet to walk upon,
I can see pillows for her head,
I can feel my waiting laughter,
I can see her petting a cat,
I can see her sleeping,
I can see her slippers on the floor.
I know that she exists
but where is she upon this earth
as the whores keep finding me?
we will taste the islands and the sea
I know that some night
in some bedroom
soon
my fingers will
rift
through
soft clean
hair
songs such as no radio
plays
all sadness, grinning
into flow.
me, and
that old woman:
sorrow
this
poet
this poet he’d been drinking 2 or 3 days and he walked out on the stage and looked at that audience and he just knew he was going to do it. there was a grand piano on stage and he walked over and lifted the lid and vomited inside the piano. then he closed the lid and gave his reading.
they had to remove the strings from the piano and wash out the insides and restring it.
I can understand why they never invited him back. but to pass the word on to other universities that he was a poet who liked to vomit into grand pianos was unfair.
they never considered the quality of his reading. I know this poet: he’s just like the rest of us: he’ll vomit anywhere for money.
winter
big sloppy wounded dog
hit by a car and walking
toward the curbing
making enormous
sounds
your body curled
red blowing out of
ass and mouth.
I stare at him and
drive on
for how would it look
for me to be holding
a dying dog on a
curbing in Arcadia,
blood seeping into my
shirt and pants and
shorts and socks and
shoes? it would just
look dumb.
besides, I figure the 2
horse in the first race
and I wanted to hook
him with the 9
in the second. I
figured the daily to
pay around $140
so I had to let that
dog die alone there
just across from the
shopping center
with the ladies looking
for bargains
as the first bit of
snow fell upon the
Sierra Madre.
what they want
Vallejo writing about
loneliness while starving to
death;
Van Gogh’s ear rejected by a
whore;
Rimbaud running off to Africa
to look for gold and finding
an incurable case of syphilis;
Beethoven gone deaf;
Pound dragged through the streets
in a cage;
Chatterton taking rat poison;