The People Look Like Flowers At Last Read online

  3 bathrooms. then the squaw decided that she also needed a

  bath. and then somebody else decided they had to take a

  shit. they all vanished. I drank my drink and went back to

  sleep.

  “we are so sorry to see you go,” a

  voice said, waking me.

  the Indians had left.

  “it’s all right,” I

  said.

  I didn’t get any

  argument.

  I got into the car with Helen and the sight

  of her nylon knees beat hammers into my brain.

  I was so sorry that I would never possess anything good,

  anything like her,

  that nothing good would ever belong to me

  not because I was always poor in dollars

  but because I was poor at expressing myself one-on-one.

  I was as yellow as the sun perhaps

  but also as warm and as true as the sun

  somewhere there inside me

  but nobody would ever find it.

  I would certainly end up forever crying the blues into a

  coffee cup in a park for old men playing

  chess or silly games of some sort.

  shit! shit!

  and then Helen shifted the gears and we rolled down through the

  rich hills and there was nothing I could say to her

  about her beauty or how tough I was

  or that just to sit and look at her for a month

  never to touch her again

  would be my only desire

  but like a bastard I was probably lying to myself

  I probably wanted everything everything

  but now at 45

  having lived with a dozen women and loving none

  I was now crazy, finished. as she

  drove me through the hills everything screamed inside of

  me, and I kept saying as we drove along

  (to myself, of course)

  fucker, it will pass,

  everything passes,

  it’s all a joke

  a joke on you,

  forget it, think of dead dogs dead things think of

  yourself: unwanted, broke, simple, a supposed poet writing of

  deep things, but you can’t really write about anything except

  YOURSELF. isn’t it true? isn’t it true? you are a prick,

  a self-centered jackass only wanting an easy way out? you crave

  money, grandstands full of applause, recognition and a book

  of poems that will still be admired in the year 2,179.

  you are a

  shit-yellow screaming jackal: you ain’t gonna make it and

  you might as well get used to it

  now.

  we drove up to the little hotel

  and the poor jackass poet said,

  “may I say goodbye?” it was

  like a bad movie, only it wasn’t a movie:

  I could understand Dos’s Crime and Punishment

  I could understand the moon leaning across a bar on skid row

  and asking for a drink, but I couldn’t understand anything about

  myself,

  I was murdered, I was shit, I was a tentful of dogs,

  I was poppies mowed down by machine-gun fire

  I was a hotshot wasp in a web

  I was less and less and still reaching for

  something, and I thought of her corny remark

  a night or so ago:

  “you have wounded eyes.”

  corny, of course, but anything that comes from a real

  woman is not corny

  and I thought of her decent paintings of people and things

  reaching wanting wanting

  and like a shell-shocked Jap surrounded by heroic

  American troops

  I kissed her

  goodbye.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t make it good for you,”

  she said. “I wasn’t ready, I guess.”

  “no, it was my fault,”

  I told her.

  I walked into the little hotel in that

  small town (from where they took you to the train

  via bus) and I got lost, shit, I got lost,

  I couldn’t find the ticket office, up and

  down steps

  in and out of doors

  tears again finally

  like a bad movie again, and

  finally I found the ticket agent

  and went through the business

  of buying a ticket.

  I went and sat in the lobby and

  I looked up from my ticket

  and there she was.

  “what are you doing here?” I asked.

  “I saw you all hunched up and sad and cold.

  I kept thinking of you.”

  the bus to the train was late, everything was

  late, so she drove me around town meanwhile and I had to go through the

  whole thing again with her.

  and I knew that even the proper words would never do

  the trick. I was dirty, dirt, I looked like dirt,

  I was dirty, dirty dirt. I just wanted to get inside of her,

  stay there, I was nothing but a cunt-wanter and

  I was broke. I couldn’t spell, I didn’t even know about using

  2 or 3 forks at dinner, I didn’t know anything about Harvard or

  diplomas or 50 grand a year, and she knew that all that

  was true: I had been kicked around for too long, I no longer

  knew the way up or out or even wanted to know: I was destined for

  failure.

  I said goodbye again

  sucking up all that was left of her into the

  little that was left of

  me. I said, “don’t look for me again. fuck it.

  we are all lost. goodbye, goodbye.”

  she was great. she drove off. I watched that last flash

  of her go around the corner and disappear and

  then I walked back into the hotel lobby.

  they were chummy, 5 or 6 assholes still sitting and

  waiting there.

  2 were doctors. another was the possessor of something great

  and important. they all had wives. it was beginning to

  snow.

  we all climbed into the bus to go to the

  train. I was already numb,

  numb again,

  numb

  again

  again and again,

  numbness and pain swelling in

  me—just like in the good

  old times.

  the Mexican drove down the road and almost stripped the

  gears.

  the comfortable people made comfortable jokes

  about weather and things

  but I sat mostly silent

  saying a word or so when necessary

  a word or so

  trying to hide from them the fact that I was a fool

  and feeling terrible

  and the small hills began to be covered with snow

  slowly things became white

  slowly things became whiter

  and I knew that it all would finally pass

  and thank the good grace of the good God,

  my years and time were running

  out; we drove on and on,

  past little villages and both good things and

  bad things were happening to the

  people in those villages to
o,

  but I still was nothing

  but arms and ears and eyes and maybe there’d be

  either some good luck for me or

  more death tomorrow.

  bewitched in New York

  the lady was the most unfaithful and terrible I had

  ever encountered and I knew it and she knew it and she was

  both ugly and beautiful at the same time and the

  two of her just sat there on the window

  ledge of that open hotel window

  in New York City on

  one of the hottest days of all time, no

  air-conditioning, no fan, we sweated and

  suffered and waited for something

  to happen.

  I was drunk, she was on drugs, we had just

  concluded a slippery bit of

  copulation and afterward she said, “you son-of-a-bitch,

  we’re stuck here in hell!”

  “good,” I said.

  then I saw her fall out of the window, we

  were four floors up, I heard the scream,

  her body was gone.

  then it was back, she was sitting on the

  window ledge again. “did you see that?” she

  asked. “I fell out of the window!”

  “good,” I said.

  “but somehow I pulled myself back in!” she

  said.

  “good,” I said.

  “is that all you can say?” she asked.

  “‘good’?”

  “I can say that I think you’re a witch or a devil

  and that your window act just now proves

  it.”

  I felt that by falling out she had lifted my

  spirits and then she had deliberately dashed

  them by climbing back

  in.

  “so I’m a witch or a devil, huh? well, no more

  ass for you!”

  “good,” I said.

  sometimes you live and stay with a woman and have no

  real idea why.

  with her I knew: it was the simple, fascinating,

  unrelenting mystery and terror of

  her self.

  don’t worry, baby, I’ll get it

  he saw her in a liquor store

  and it shook him

  shook shook shook

  like shark meat alive still in sunlight flopping.

  he hurled his eyes at her,

  a miracle, he heard her talking to him,

  she was funny, she made him laugh, she made him feel like

  all the doors were open for him.

  it was easy. she went back to his place with him.

  they talked. it was easy. she was a glorious fuck. they

  fucked 3 times. she

  stayed.

  “Smaltz,” they phoned him from work the next day,

  “what ya doin’, ya didn’t come

  in! we got the Granger-Wently order to get

  out: 45 six-foot squeegees and 90 gallons of

  ultramarine Day-Glo!”

  “I’m busy,” he said, and they replied,

  “we can get a shipping clerk

  anywhere!” he hung up, turned her over and

  fucked her

  again.

  it wasn’t the same as with the others:

  every time he finished he felt he wanted more.

  as she took the trip to the bathroom it seemed as if he

  hadn’t yet really had her, and anything she put on,

  a newspaper hat, a pair of his socks, she looked

  glorious, funny funny, hell, she made him feel good,

  everything she said, shit, was a

  joke. she’d put that body up against his every morning and

  say, “ah, don’t go ta work, Eddie baby, stay wit me!”

  “I can’t go to work, sweets, I don’t have no job,” he’d say,

  and they’d go at it

  again.

  so the day came: no rent, no coffee, no wine, no

  cigarettes. the landlord stated: one more day;

  get it up or get it out—!

  “shit, I thought you knew what you were doing,”

  she told Smaltz. it was the first time she wasn’t

  funny.

  “don’t worry, baby, I’ll get it,” he told

  her, and they went one last good one.

  lucky, he had the .32. he thought, liquor store, no, I’ll get the

  big stuff, she’s got it

  comin’, she’s for me, mine, paper hat, all that

  shaking, god, nothing like

  it.

  he tried the bank. the big gray one nearby.

  he went in. he was ready: .32, paper bag, the note:

  “a stickup. quiet and you don’t die. no buttons. put money in

  bag. I am desperate and will kill. please let us both live.”

  she emptied the drawer into the bag. he saw it:

  lots of hundreds, fifties. sweet mother. a trip to Paris.

  the bank clerk looked good too. he’d like to fuck

  her. anybody would.

  he was almost at the door

  when he sensed she’d tripped the button right

  away. they’d even cleared the

  crowd. the guard at the door was easy—

  he was so fat Smaltz couldn’t miss:

  he dropped like a putty freak.

  outside he saw the squad car;

  the thing was driving along the wrong side of

  the street—how could they do that?—

  keeping even as he was running,

  and firing at his ass,

  coming close; he ran up an alley, dead end,

  but he caught a freight elevator

  at the bottom, “move it up! MOVE IT UP!”

  he shouted at another freak

  but the freak just stood there

  looking at the .32, and he shot the freak,

  nothing else to do,

  and he was working at the handles, trying to

  close the doors

  when they got there, fired at him,

  fired into that cheap tin elevator; he couldn’t get off a

  return shot. they got him, took the paper bag out of his

  hand.

  the next night she was sleeping with the owner of a

  hardware store, Harry, a good solid income, 2 fingers

  missing from his right hand—hunting accident in Indiana,

  1938.

  you could get another shipping clerk

  anywhere.

  the telephone message machine

  is one of the world’s greatest

  inventions.

  seldom do I pick up the phone

  to interrupt the

  message

  and speak directly to the

  caller.

  and I hardly ever phone

  anybody

  these days

  nor did I in the

  past

  unless it was some new girlfriend

  who had me by the

  balls.

  and she never had an

  answering machine

  just pills

  unpaid bills

  neglected children

  many pressing needs

  and an utterly overvalued sense of her

  self,

  especially by

  me.

 
that nice girl who came in to change the sheets

  I met her when she came in to

  change the sheets.

  St. Louis.

  she told me: you’re sick.

  and I said:

  yes, I’m sick.

  and she said:

  you need something to drink

  I came to change the sheets

  but you need something to drink

  give me some money and

  I’ll come back with something to

  drink.

  so

  I gave her the money

  not knowing her

  but she came back with something to

  drink.

  she sat in a chair and I

  stayed in bed and we drank

  silently.

  and then we began to talk

  and then we laughed a little

  and I began to feel better and she

  looked better

  and I said:

  I didn’t think you’d come back

  and she said:

  hell, I work here.

  and I said:

  o, that’s why you came

  back.

  and she said:

  no, that’s not why I came back.

  and

  I liked that.

  I hardly remember how it happened

  but we were soon both in bed

  smoking cigarettes and drinking

  beer

  out of those heavy quart

  jugs.

  there seemed no hurry.

  and then it began to

  work. I don’t know how it worked

  but it was all right. we

  fucked.

  and she got up and closed the windows to the south

  and said:

  that’s what’s killing you

  those gas fumes coming up from the avenue

  that

  and the drinking. at least we can get you

  away from the gas fumes.

  we laughed and then she got back in bed and we

  talked some more and smoked and she