New Poems Book Three Page 9

  you were healthy without effort,

  courteous without being prompted,

  you even read the classics at an early age,

  you were not what we would call selfish or debased,

  you were even likeable most of the time,

  but now—bang!—

  you’re dead, you’re dead, and

  you must leave because

  there is

  no room

  left here

  for

  you

  now.

  ALONE IN THIS ROOM

  I am alone in this room as the world

  washes over me.

  I sit and wait and wonder.

  I have a terrible taste in my mouth

  as I sit and wait in this room.

  I can no longer see the walls.

  everything has changed into something else.

  I cannot joke about this,

  I cannot explain this as

  the world washes over me.

  I don’t care if you believe me because

  I’ve lost all interest in that too.

  I am in a place where I have never been before.

  I am alone in a different place that

  does not include other faces,

  other human beings.

  it is happening to me now

  in a space within a space as

  I sit and wait alone in this room.

  FAREWELL, FAREWELL

  the blade cuts down and through,

  pulls out, enters again, twists.

  this is the test so

  spit it out, sucker, you’ve long ago

  demonstrated your valor

  in the face of this unhappy world, in the

  face of this

  bitterly unhappy world,

  and who but a fool would want to

  linger?

  your little supply of good luck has been

  used up so

  spit it out, sucker:

  the last goodbye is always the

  sweetest.

  ABOUT THE MAIL LATELY

  I keep getting letters, more and more of

  them wondering if I am really dead, they have

  heard that I am dead.

  well, I suppose that it’s my age and all

  the drinking that I have done, still

  do.

  I should be dead.

  I will be dead.

  and I have never been too interested in

  living, it has been hard work, slave

  labor, still is.

  I’ve been doing some thinking about

  death of late and have come up with

  one disturbing thought:

  that death could be hard work too,

  that maybe it’s another kind of trap.

  it probably is.

  meanwhile, like everybody else,

  I do the things I do and I wait around.

  I could use this poem as a reply letter

  and mail out copies to those who write

  me because they’ve heard that I am dead.

  I will sign them to

  give them legitimacy so that

  the receivers can sell them to

  collectors who can then resell them for

  an even higher price to each other.

  which reminds me that I no longer

  receive letters from young ladies who

  include nude photos and tell me that

  they would love to come around and do

  housework and lick my stamps.

  they probably hope that I can’t get it up

  any more.

  in any event,

  I’ll just continue to answer the death letters,

  have another drink, smoke these

  Jamaican cigars and hustle for my

  rightful place in Classic American Literature

  before I

  stiffen up

  kick the bucket

  swallow the 8 ball

  send up my last rocket

  hustle into the dark

  get the hell out

  hang it up

  and say my last goodbye while

  clutching my

  last uncashed

  ticket.

  LIFE ON THE HALF SHELL

  the obvious is going to kill us,

  the obvious is killing us.

  our luck is used up.

  as always, we regroup

  and wait.

  we haven’t forgotten how to

  fight

  but the long battle has made us

  weary.

  the obvious is going to kill us,

  we are engulfed by the

  obvious.

  we allowed it.

  we deserve it.

  a hand moves in the

  sky.

  a freight train passes in the night.

  the fences are broken.

  the heart sits alone.

  the obvious is going to kill us.

  we wait, dreamless.

  THE HARDEST

  birthday for me was my 30th.

  I didn’t want anybody to know.

  I’d been sitting in the same bar

  night and day

  and I thought, how long am I going

  to be

  able to keep up this

  bluff?

  when am I going to give it up and

  start acting like everybody

  else?

  I ordered another drink and

  thought about it

  and then the answer came to

  me:

  when you’re dead, baby, when

  you’re dead like the rest of

  them.

  A TERRIBLE NEED

  some people simply need to

  be unhappy, they’ll scrounge it out

  of any given situation

  taking every opportunity

  to point out

  every simple error

  or oversight

  and then become

  hateful

  dissatisfied

  vengeful.

  don’t they realize that

  there’s so little

  time

  for each of us

  in this strange

  life to make things

  whole?

  and to squander

  our lives living

  like that

  is nearly

  unforgiveable?

  and that

  there’s never

  ever

  any way

  then

  to recover

  all that which will be

  thus lost

  forever?

  BODY SLAM

  Andre the Giant dead in his Paris

  hotel room.

  7 feet and 550 pounds, dead.

  he used to wrestle.

  he was a champion.

  a week earlier he had attended

  his father’s funeral.

  Andre had been a kind soul who

  liked to send flowers to people.

  but dead he was a problem.

  they had to carry him out of

  there

  and no casket would hold him.

  now maybe he’d get some

  flowers?

  Andre the Giant

  in Paris

  wrestling with the Angel of

  Death.

  and the fix wasn’t in,

  this

  time.

  THE GODS ARE GOOD

  the poems keep getting better and

  better

  and I keep winning at the race

  track

  and even when the bad moments

  arrive

  I handle them

  better.

  it’s as if there was a rocket

  inside of me

  getting ready to shoot out of

  the top of my

  head

  and when it does

>   what’s left behind I

  won’t regret.

  THE SOUND OF TYPEWRITERS

  we were both starving writers, Hatcher and I;

  he lived on the 2nd floor of the apartment

  house, right below me, and a young lady,

  Cissy, she lived on the first floor. she had just

  a fair mind but a great body and flowing blond hair and

  if you could ignore her unkind city face

  she was most of anyone’s good dream; anyhow,

  I suppose the sound of the typewriters

  ignited her curiosity or stirred

  something in her—she knocked at my door one

  day, we shared some wine and then she nodded

  at the bed and that was that.

  she knocked at my door, sporadically, after

  that

  but then sometimes I heard her knocking on

  Hatcher’s door

  and as I listened from above to their voices, the laughter,

  I had trouble typing, especially after it

  became silent down there.

  to keep myself typing, as if I was unconcerned,

  I copied items from the daily

  newspaper.

  Hatcher and I used to discuss Cissy.

  “you in love with her?” he’d ask.

  “fuck no! how about you?”

  “no way!” he’d answer. “look, if you’re

  in love with her, I’ll tell her not to

  come around my place

  anymore.”

  “hey, baby, I’ll do the same for you,”

  I said.

  “forget it,” he’d respond.

  I don’t know who got the most visits, I

  think it was just about

  even

  but we each realized after a while

  that Cissy liked to knock

  while the typewriter was working

  so both Hatcher and I did a great deal of extra

  typing.

  Hatcher got lucky with his writing first

  so he moved out of that dive and

  Cissy went with him; they moved

  into his new apartment

  together.

  after that I began getting phone calls

  from Hatcher:

  “Jesus, that whore has no class! she’s never

  home!”

  “are you in love with her?”

  “hell no, man, you think I’d get hooked

  on trash like her?”

  Cissy would be listening on the extension

  and then she’d give Hatcher an explicit verbal

  retort.

  after a while Cissy moved out of Hatcher’s

  place;

  she still came around to see me occasionally

  but she was always with some different

  guy, all of them

  real low-life

  subnormals.

  I couldn’t understand the why of those visits;

  but no matter—I had somehow lost all

  interest.

  then I too got a little lucky and

  was able to move from the

  slums; I left the ex-landlord my

  new phone number

  in case of

  emergency.

  some time went by, then the ex-landlord

  phoned: “there’s a woman been coming

  by. her name is

  Cissy.

  she wants your new phone number and

  address, she’s very

  insistent.

  should I give it to

  her?”

  “no, please don’t.”

  “man, she’s a number! you mind if I

  date her?”

  “not at all, help

  yourself.”

  it’s strange how things like that

  are good and interesting

  for a while

  and it’s o.k. when they end and

  you can simply walk

  away.

  but the good parts were

  great and I’ll

  also always remember Cissy downstairs

  there at Hatcher’s

  and me up there madly

  typing

  weather reports,

  political columns

  and

  obituaries—

  I wore out many a good ribbon and

  worried myself

  stupid, so

  Cissy was memorable after

  all

  and that can’t be said

  about just

  anybody, you

  know?

  or

  don’t

  you

  know?

  A FIGHT

  pretty boy was tiring

  his punches were wild

  his arms were weary

  and the old wino closed in and

  it became ugly,

  pretty boy dropped to his knees

  and the wino had him by the

  throat

  banging his head against the brick

  wall,

  pretty boy fell over

  as the wino paused

  landed a swift kick

  to the gential area

  then turned and walked back up

  the dark alley

  to where we stood watching.

  we parted to let him

  through

  and he walked past us

  turned

  looked back

  lit a cigarette

  and then moved on.

  when I got back in

  she was raging:

  “where the hell have you been?”

  pink-eyed she was

  sitting up against the pillows

  just her slippers on.

  “stop for a quickie?

  no wonder you haven’t looked

  at me for a week!”

  “I saw a good fight. free.

  better than anything at the

  Olympic. I saw a good ass-

  kicking alley fight.”

  “you expect me to believe

  that?”

  “christ, don’t you ever wash

  the glasses? well, we’ll use

  these two.”

  I poured two. she knocked hers

  off. well, she needed it

  and I needed mine.

  “it was really brutal. I hate

  to see such things but I can’t

  help watching.”

  “pour me another drink.”

  I poured two more, she needed

  hers because she lived with me.

  I needed mine because I worked

  as a stockroom boy

  for the May Co.

  “you stopped for a quickie!”

  “no, I watched a fight.”

  she tossed off her second drink.

  she was trying to decide

  whether I had had a quickie or

  whether I had watched a fight.

  “pour us another drink, is that

  the only bottle we’ve got?”

  I winked at her and pulled

  another bottle from a paper sack.

  we seldom ate. we drank

  and I worked as a

  stockroom boy for the May Co. and

  she had a pair of the

  most beautiful legs I had

  ever seen.

  as I poured the third drink

  she got up, smiled, kicked off the

  slippers and put her high heels

  on.

  “we need some god-damned

  ice,” she said as I watched

  her ass wobble into the

  kitchen.

  then she vanished in there

  and I thought about that

  fight again.

  SUNBEAM

  sometimes when you are in hell

  and it is continuous

  you get a bit giddy

  and then when you ar
e tired beyond being

  tired

  sometimes a crazy feeling gets a hold of

  you.

  the factory was in east L.A.

  and of the 150 workers

  I was one of only two white men

  there.

  the other had a soft job.

  mine was to wrap and tape

  the light fixtures

  as they came off the assembly line and

  as I tried

  to keep pace the

  sharp edges of the tape

  cut through my gloves and into my

  hands.

  finally

  the gloves had to be thrown

  away

  because

  they were cut to shreds

  and then my hands were completely exposed

  each new slice like an electric

  shock.

  I was the big dumb white boy

  and as the others

  worked to keep pace

  all eyes were watching to see

  if I would

  fall behind.

  I gave up on my hands

  but I didn’t give up.

  the pace seemed impossible

  and then something snapped in my

  brain and I screamed

  out the name of the firm we were all slaving

  for, “SUNBEAM!”

  at once

  everybody laughed

  all the girls on the assembly line and

  all the guys too although

  we all still had to struggle to keep up with

  the work flow.

  then I yelled it

  again:

  “SUNBEAM!”

  it was a total release for me.

  then one of the girls on the

  assembly line yelled back,

  “SUNBEAM!”

  and we all

  laughed

  together.

  and then as we continued

  to work

  a new voice

  would suddenly call out from

  somewhere,

  “SUNBEAM!”

  and each time we

  laughed until

  we were all drunk with

  laughter.

  then the foreman,

  Morry,

  came in from the other

  room.

  “WHAT THE HELL’S GOING ON IN

  HERE? THAT SCREAMING HAS GOT

  TO STOP!”

  so then, we stopped.

  and as Morry turned away we saw that the

  seat of his pants was jammed up in the crack of

  his ass, that fool in control of

  our universe!

  I lasted about 4 months there

  and I will always remember that day,

  that joy, the madness, the mutual

  magic of our

  many voices

  one at a time

  screaming

  “SUNBEAM!”

  sometimes when you are in

  a living hell

  long enough

  things like that sometimes happen

  and then

  you’re in a kind of heaven

  a heaven which might not seem to be

  very much at all