Run With the Hunted (25 page)

“I can see that.”

“Oh, I just
love
this frame but I don't like the picture.”

“Take the frame.”

“But what should I do with the picture?”

“Throw it in the trash.” I looked around. “If anybody sees a picture they like, please take it.”

They did. Soon the walls were bare.

“Do you need these chairs?”

“No, not really.”

Passersby were coming in from the street, and not even bothering to introduce themselves.

“How about the sofa?” someone asked in a very loud voice. “Do you want it?”

“I don't want the sofa,” I said.

They took the sofa, then the breakfastnook table and chairs.

“You have a toaster here somewhere, don't you, Henry?”

They took the toaster.

“You don't need these dishes, do you?”

“No.”

“And the silverware?”

“No.”

“How about the coffee pot and the blender?”

“Take them.”

One of the lathes opened a cupboard on the back porch. “What about all these preserved fruits? You'll never be able to eat all these.”

“All right, everybody, take some. But try to divide them equally.”

“Oh, I want the strawberries!”

“Oh, I want the figs!”

“Oh, I want the marmalade!”

People kept leaving and returning, bringing new people with them.

“Hey, here's a fifth of whiskey in the cupboard! Do you drink, Henry?”

“Leave the whiskey.”

The house was getting crowded. The toilet flushed. Somebody knocked a glass from the sink and broke it.

“You better save this vacuum cleaner, Henry. You can use it for your apartment.”

“All right, I'll keep it.”

“He had some garden tools in the garage. How about the garden tools?”

“No, I better keep those.”

“I'll give you $15 for the garden tools.”

“O.K.”

He gave me the $15 and I gave him the key to the garage. Soon you could hear him rolling the lawn mower across the street to his place.

“You shouldn't have given him all that equipment for $15, Henry. It was worth much more than that.”

I didn't answer.

“How about the car? It's four years old.”

“I think I'll keep the car.”

“I'll give you $50 for it.”

“I think I'll keep the car.”

Somebody rolled up the rug in the front room. After that people began to lose interest. Soon there were only three or four left, then they were all gone. They left me the garden hose, the bed, the refrigerator and stove, and a roll of toilet paper.

I walked outside and locked the garage door. Two small boys came by on roller skates. They stopped as I was locking the garage doors.

“See that man?”

“Yes.”

“His father died.”

They skated on. I picked up the hose, turned the faucet on and began to water the roses.

—
H
OT
W
ATER
M
USIC

There is enough treachery, hatred,

violence,

Absurdity in the average human

being

To supply any given army on any given

day.

AND The Best At Murder Are Those

Who Preach Against It.

AND The Best At Hate Are Those

Who Preach LOVE

AND THE BEST AT WAR

—FINALLY—ARE THOSE WHO

PREACH

PEACE

Those Who Preach GOD

NEED God

Those Who Preach PEACE

Do Not Have Peace.

THOSE WHO PREACH LOVE

DO NOT HAVE LOVE

BEWARE THE PREACHERS

Beware The Knowers.

Beware
Those Who
Are ALWAYS
READING
BOOKS

Beware Those Who Either Detest

Poverty Or Are Proud Of It

BEWARE Those Quick To Praise

For They Need PRAISE In Return

BEWARE Those Quick To Censure:

They Are Afraid Of What They Do

Not Know

Beware Those Who Seek Constant

Crowds; They Are Nothing

Alone

Beware
The Average Man
The Average Woman
BEWARE Their Love

Their Love Is Average, Seeks

Average

But There Is Genius In Their Hatred

There Is Enough Genius In Their

Hatred To Kill You, To Kill

Anybody.

Not Wanting Solitude

Not Understanding Solitude

They Will Attempt To Destroy

Anything

That Differs

From Their Own

Not Being Able
To Create Art
They Will Not
Understand Art

They Will Consider Their Failure

As Creators

Only As A Failure

Of The World

Not Being Able To Love Fully

They Will BELIEVE Your Love

Incomplete

AND THEN THEY WILL HATE

YOU

And Their Hatred Will Be Perfect

Like A Shining Diamond

Like A Knife

Like A Mountain

LIKE A TIGER

LIKE Hemlock

Their Finest
ART

dying for a beer dying

for and of life

on a windy afternoon in Hollywood

listening to symphony music from my little red radio

on the floor.

a friend said,

“all ya gotta do is go out on the sidewalk

and lay down

somebody will pick you up

somebody will take care of you.”

I look out the window at the sidewalk

I see something walking on the sidewalk

she wouldn't lay down there,

only in special places for special people with special $$$$

and

special ways

while I am dying for a beer on a windy afternoon in

Hollywood,

nothing like a beautiful broad dragging it past you on the

sidewalk

moving it past your famished window

she's dressed in the finest cloth

she doesn't care what you say

how you look what you do

as long as you do not get in her

way, and it must be that she doesn't shit or

have blood

she must be a cloud, friend, the way she floats past us.

I am too sick to lay down

the sidewalks frighten me

the whole damned city frightens me,

what I will become

what I have become

frightens me.

ah, the bravado is gone

the big run through center is gone

on a windy afternoon in Hollywood

my radio cracks and spits its dirty music

through a floor full of empty beerbottles.

now I hear a siren

it comes closer

the music stops

the man on the radio says,

“we will send you a free 25-page booklet:

FACE THE FACTS ABOUT COLLEGE COSTS.”

the siren fades into the cardboard mountains

and I look out the window again as the clasped fist of

boiling cloud comes down—

the wind shakes the plants outside

I wait for evening I wait for night I wait sitting in a chair

by the window—

the cook drops in the live

red-pink salty

rough-tit crab and

the game works

on

come get me.

I drive to the beach at night

in the winter

and sit and look at the burned-down amusement pier

wonder why they just let it sit there

in the water.

I want it out of there,

blown-up,

vanished,

erased;

that pier should no longer sit there

with madmen sleeping inside

the burned-out guts of the funhouse …

it's awful, I say, blow the damn thing up,

get it out of my eyes,

that tombstone in the sea.

the madmen can find other holes

to crawl into.

I used to walk that pier when I was 8

years old.

it's unfortunate, and simply not the style, but I don't care:

girls remind me of hair in the sink, girls remind me of intestines

and bladders and excretory movements; it's unfortunate also that

ice-cream bells, babies, engine-valves, plagiostomes, palm trees,

footsteps in the hall … all excite me with the cold calmness

of the gravestone; nowhere, perhaps, is there sanctuary except

in hearing that there were other desperate men:

Dillinger, Rimbaud, Villon, Babyface Nelson, Seneca, Van Gogh,

or desperate women: lady wrestlers, nurses, waitresses, whores

poetesses … alothough,

I do suppose the breaking out of ice-cubes is important

or a mouse nosing an empty beercan—

two hollow emptinesses looking into each other,

or the nightsea stuck with soiled ships

that enter the chary web of your brain with their lights,

with their salty lights

that touch you and leave you

for the more solid love of some India;

or driving great distances without reason

sleep-drugged through open windows that

tear and flap your shirt like a frightened bird,

and always the stoplights, always red,

nightfire and defeat, defeat …

scorpions, scraps, fardels:

x-jobs, x-wives, x-faces, x-lives,

Beethoven in his grave as dead as a beet;

red wheel-barrows, yes, perhaps,

or a letter from Hell signed by the devil

or two good boys beating the guts out of each other

in some cheap stadium full of screaming smoke,

but mostly, I don't care, sitting here

with a mouthful of rotten teeth,

sitting here reading Herrick and Spenser and

Marvell and Hopkins and Bronte (Emily, today);

and listening to the Dvorak
Midday Witch

or Franck's
Le Chasseur Maudit
,

actually I don't care, and it's unfortunate:

I have been getting letters from a young poet

(very young, it seems) telling me that some day

I will most surely be recognized as

one of the world's great poets.
Poet!

a malversation: today I walked in the sun and streets

of this city: seeing nothing, learning nothing, being

nothing, and coming back to my room

I passed an old woman who smiled a horrible smile;

she was already dead, and everywhere I remembered wires:

telephone wires, electric wires, wires for electric faces

trapped like goldfish in the glass and smiling,

and the birds were gone, none of the birds wanted wire

or the smiling of wire

and I closed my door (at last)

but through the windows it was the same:

a horn honked, somebody laughed, a toilet flushed,

and oddly then

I thought of all the horses with numbers

that have gone by in the screaming,