Burning in Water, Drowing in Flame (7 page)

sway with me, everything sad—

madmen in stone houses

without doors,

lepers streaming love and song

frogs trying to figure

the sky;

sway with me, sad things—

fingers split on a forge

old age like breakfast shells

used books, used people

used flowers, used love

I need you

I need you

I need you:

it
has run away

like a horse or a dog,

dead or lost

or unforgiving.

the essence of the belly

like a white balloon sacked

is disturbing

like the running of feet

on the stairs

when you don’t know

who is there.

of course, if you turn on the radio

you might forget

the fat under your shirt

or the rats lined up in order

like old women on Hollywood Blvd

waiting on a comedy

show.

I think of old men

in four dollar rooms

looking for socks in dresser drawers

while standing in brown underwear

all the time the clock ticking on

warm as a

cobra.

ah, there are some decent things, maybe:

the sky, the circus

the legs of ladies getting out of cars,

the peach coming through the door

like a Mozart symphony.

the scale says 198. that’s what

I weigh. it is 2:10 a.m.

dedication is for chess players.

the glorious single cause is

waiting on the anvil

while

smoking, pissing, reading Genet

or the funny papers;

but maybe it’s early enough yet

to write your aunt in

Palm Springs and tell her

what’s wrong.

I’ll settle for the 6 horse

on a rainy afternoon

a paper cup of coffee

in my hand

a little way to go,

the wind twirling out

small wrens from

the upper grandstand roof,

the jocks coming out

for a middle race

silent

and the easy rain making

everything

at once

almost alike,

the horses at peace with

each other

before the drunken war

and I am under the grandstand

feeling for

cigarettes

settling for coffee,

then the horses walk by

taking their little men

away—

it is funereal and graceful

and glad

like the opening

of flowers.

yeah sure, I’ll be in unless I’m out

don’t knock if the lights are out

or you hear voices or then

I might be reading Proust

if someone slips Proust under my door

or one of his bones for my stew,

and I can’t loan money or

the phone

or what’s left of my car

though you can have yesterday’s newspaper

an old shirt or a bologna sandwich

or sleep on the couch

if you don’t scream at night

and you can talk about yourself

that’s only normal;

hard times are upon us all

only I am not trying to raise a family

to send through Harvard

or buy hunting land,

I am not aiming high

I am only trying to keep myself alive

just a little longer,

so if you sometimes knock

and I don’t answer

and there isn’t a woman in here

maybe I have broken my jaw

and am looking for wire

or I am chasing the butterflies in

my wallpaper,

I mean if I don’t answer

I don’t answer, and the reason is

that I am not yet ready to kill you

or love you, or even accept you,

it means I don’t want to talk

I am busy, I am mad, I am glad

or maybe I’m stringing up a rope;

so even if the lights are on

and you hear sound

like breathing or praying or singing

a radio or the roll of dice

or typing—

go away, it is not the day

the night, the hour;

it is not the ignorance of impoliteness,

I wish to hurt nothing, not even a bug

but sometimes I gather evidence of a kind

that takes some sorting,

and your blue eyes, be they blue

and your hair, if you have some

or your mind—they cannot enter

until the rope is cut or knotted

or until I have shaven into

new mirrors, until the world is

stopped or opened

            forever.

in grievous deity my cat

walks around

he walks around and around

with

electric tail and

push-button

eyes

he is

alive and

plush and

final as a plum tree

neither of us understands

cathedrals or

the man outside

watering his

lawn

if I were all the man

that he is

cat—

if there were men

like this

the world could

begin

he leaps up on the couch

and walks through

porticoes of my

admiration.

stew at noon, my dear; and look:

the ants, the sawdust, the mica

plants, the shadows of banks like

bad jokes;

do you think we’ll hear

The Bartered Bride
today?

how’s your tooth?

I should wash my feet and

clean my nails

not that I’d feel more like Christ

but

less like a leper—

which is important when

poverty is a small game you play

with your time.

let’s see: first the mailman

then yesterday’s copy of the
Times.

we might

this way

get blown up a day too

late.

then there’s the library or

a walk down the boulevards.

many great men have

walked down the boulevards

but it’s terrible to be

a great man

like a monkey carrying a 5 pound

sack of potatoes up a 40 foot hill.

Paris can wait.

more salt?

after we eat

let’s sleep, let’s sleep.

we can’t make any money

awake.

the lilies storm my brain

by god by god

like nazi storm troopers!

do you think I’m going

tizzy?

your blue sweater

with tits hanging

loose, and

I think vaguely of Christ

on the cross, I don’t know

why, and icecream

cones. this July day

lilies storm my brain,

I’ll remember this

but

if only I had a

camera

or a big dog walking beside

me. big dogs make things

concrete

don’t they?

a big dog to wrinkle his

snot-nose

like this lake gypped of

clear surface

by a quick and clever

wind.

you’re here, yet I’m sad

again. I feel my porkchop ribs

over my lambchop heart
ugh

gullible hard-working

intestines, dejected penis

chewing-gum bladder

liver turning to fat

like a penny-arcade trout

ashamed buttocks

practical ears

moth-like hands

spearfish nose

rock-slide mouth and

the rest. the rest:

lilies in my brain

hoping good times

thinking old times:

Capone and the diamonds

Charlie Chaplin

Laurel and Hardy

Clara Bow

the rest.

it never happened

but it
seemed
like

there were times when rot

stopped

waited like a streetcar

at a signal.

now I

like a movie punk

(lilies up there)

take your hand

and we walk forward

to rent a boat

to drown in. I breathe the wind, flex my muscles

but only my belly

wiggles.

we get in

the motor churns the

slime.

the city buildings

come down like ostrich

mouths

and hollow out

our brains

yet the sun

comes in

zap! zap! zap!

brilliant germs crawl our

chapped flesh. my

I feel as if I were in

church: everything

stinks. I hold the rubber sides

of everywhere

my balls are snowballs

I see stricken bells of malaria

old men getting into

bed, into model-T Fords

as the fish swim below us

full of dirty words and macaroni

and crossword puzzles

and the death of me, you and

the Katzenjammer

kids.

the dead can sleep

they don’t get up and rage

they don’t have a wife.

her white face

like a flower in a closed

window lifts up and

looks at me.

the curtain smokes a cigarette

and a moth dies in a

freeway crash

as I examine the shadows of my

hands.

an owl, the size of a baby clock

rings for me,
come on come on

it says as Jerusalem is hustled

down crotch-stained halls.

the 5 a.m. grass is nasal now

in hums of battleships and valleys

in the raped light that brings on

the fascist birds.

I put out the lamp and get in bed

beside her, she thinks I’m there

mumbles a rosy gratitude

as I stretch my legs

to coffin length

get in and swim away

from frogs and fortunes.

in the earliest possible day

in the blue-headed noon

    I will telegraph you

            a

boney hand

decorated with

sharkskin

    a

large boy with

yellow teeth and an epileptic

father

will bring it

  to your

door

smile

  and

accept

it is better than

the

alternative

she wrote me a letter from a small

room near the Seine.

she said she was going to dancing

class, she got up, she said

at 5 o’clock in the morning

and typed at poems

or painted

and when she felt like crying

she had a special bench

by the river.

her book of
Songs

would be out

in the Fall.

I did not know what to tell her

but

I told her

to get any bad teeth pulled

and be careful of the French

lover.

I put her photo by the radio

near the fan

and it moved

like something

alive.

I sat and watched it

until I had smoked the

5 or 6

cigarettes left.

then I got up

and went to bed.