The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills (13 page)

 

I live among rats and roaches

but there is this high-rise apt., a new one

across from me, glimmering pool, lived in by very young

people with new cars, mostly red or white cars,

and I allow myself to look upon this scene as

some type of miracle world

not because it is possibly so

but because it is easier to think this way,

—why take more knives?—

so today I sat here and I saw one young man

sitting in his red car

sucking his thumb and waiting

as another young man, obviously his friend,

talked to a young woman dressed in kind of long slim short

pants, yes, and a black ill-fitting blouse,

and she had on some kind of high-pointed hat, rather

like the kukluxklan wear, and the other young man sucked, sat and

sucked his thumb

in the

red car and

behind them, through the glass door

the other young people sat and sat and sat and sat

around the blue pool,

and the young woman was angry

she was ugly anyhow and now she was very ugly

but she must have had something to interest the young man

and she said something violent and final

(I couldn’t hear any of it)

and walked off west, away from the young man and the building,

and the young man was flushed in the face, seemingly more stunned

than angry, and then they both sat in the car for a while,

and then the other young man took his thumb out of his

mouth, and started the red car, and then they were

gone.

 

 

and through my window and through the glass door

I could see the other young people

sitting sitting sitting

around the blue pool. my miracle crowd, my future

leaders.

 

 

to make it round out, I decided that the night before

the young man (not the one with the thumb) had tried

to screw the ugly girl in the pointed hat while they were both

drunk, and that the ugly girl in the pointed hat

felt—for some reason—that this was a damned dirty trick.

she acted bit parts in little theatre—was said to have talent—

had a fairly wealthy father, and her name was Gig or Ging or

something odd like that—and that was mainly why the boys wanted to

screw her: because her first name was Gig or Ging or Aszpupu,

and the boys wanted to say, very much wanted to say:

“I balled with Ging last night.”

 

 

all right, so having settled all that,

I put on some coffee and rolled myself something

calming.

 

 

we ran the women in a straight line down to the river

clinging to the fear in their rice-stupid heads

clinging to their infants

mice-like sucklings breathing in the air at odds of

one thousand to one;

we shot the men as they kneeled in a circle,

and the death of the men held almost no death,

it was somehow like a movie film,

men of spider arms and legs and a hunk of cloth

to cover the sexual organ.

men hardly born could hardly be killed

and there they were down there now, finally dead,

the sun straining on their faces of weird

puzzlement.

 

 

some of the women could fire rifles. we left a small

detachment to decide upon

them. then we fired up the unburned huts and moved on

to the next village.

 

 

I keep looking at the

kid

up

side

    down,

and I am tickling

her sides

as her mother pins new

diapers

on,

and the kid doesn’t look like

me

—upsidedown

so I get ready to

kill them both

    but

relent:

 

 

I don’t even

look like

myself—

    rightsideup, so.

shit on it!

I tickle again, say

crazy

words, and and and and

hope

all the while

that this

    very unappetizing

world

does not blow up

in all our

    laughing

faces.

 

 

shot through a hole in the

bellybutton

9 miles wide—

out it came:

those Indian head pennies

those old dead whores

the sick sea walking like

pink

toast

past bottles of orange

children

dripping

drip

    dry

 

 

barometer

lowering

while the guns elevated like

erections—

tossed the apple salad back

into the

sky.

 

 

(he died then, stuffing balloons with

marbles as the prince

laughed.)

 

 

genuinely traginew, dandy then, babe,

the age-old bile:

dummies stuffed with wax and

steel,

a deeper dark than any dark

we have ever

known—

I do not speak of such obvious things as

skin—

christ, it’s a bad

fix, ghostly true,

I might even say

off the top of the bottle

that I suffer more than

most, haha, but

I’ve also found that

good men

neither talk about their virtues or

their possibilities,

—strike deep here,

catch fish, headaches, sores, blisters,

traffic tickets, tooth decay, hatred from

lesbians, the surgeon’s brown

finger—

if death is so fearful

then life must be

good?

dandy then, babe, genuinely

traginew, and

I’ve found out why men

sign their names to their

works—

not that they created them

but more

than the others did

not.

 

 

they’d stuck him in the shoulder and

he came out

pissed—

feeling all the space of ground

feeling the sunshine

and

looking for somebody.

 

 

it stood there.

 

 

it seemed that even the sun was afraid of the

bull.

 

 

the matador screamed something

shook and flagged the cape.

the bull came at him.

he gave him the cape. but the mat did not get very

close.

 

 

then the bull saw the padded

horse, the blindfolded horse,

and he trotted over

and began working his horns against the horse’s

side and underside.

 

 

the pic

there on top of the horse

lanced him good

he stuck him deep and hard with the

pole

really muscling it in

screwing it in deep

right in the top part of the back there

up near the neck.

 

 

this makes the bull go more for the horse—

he probably thinks the horse is doing it to him—

and as he goes more for the horse

he gets drilled more and more

by the chickenshit

lance.

 

 

the bull left the horse

went for the cape

then came back to the horse.

then he got another drilling by the

pic.

 

 

he does not any longer quite look like the

bull who first ran into the ring.

but they haven’t cut him down enough

they have something else for

him: the banderillas.

 

 

short sharp pieces that are jammed into the upper back

and neck, the placement of these does
appear

dangerous.

no cape is used and these young Mexican boys

stupid and with dirty

behinds

they leap into the air and make the

placements as the bull runs

by.

 

 

we watched them make the

placements.

now the bull was properly ready for the matador to be

brave.

the neck and back muscles were severed, shredded in

many places.

the head came

down.

 

 

Harry took a drink. “these Mexican bulls aren’t any

good. you oughta see the Spanish bulls. they got horns

like this”:

he showed me how they had horns like that. with his

hands. then we both had a

drink.

 

 

the matador did not seem to get in very

close. the bull kept getting in those

tired and desperate lunges at the cape

getting more and more winded

more and more

useless.

 

 

each of the matador’s movements had some meaning, some

name. the Mexicans knew it. the drunken Americans in the

shade with good jobs and subnormal wives

didn’t know anything. they rooted for the

bull.

they didn’t know that it took guts

to even do a bad job with the bull.

 

 

well, this bull was bad and the matador was bad

but the matador was worse than the

bull, and I guess that’s about as bad as the act can

get.

except when the bull is so much
less
worse than the

matador and the mat gets gored and the Americans go

home happy and

fuck all night

trying to forget about the job in the

morning.

 

 

kill time came. the mat knew what to do. he knew the

spot. it was like running a hot poker into a

barrel of loose tin foil.

 

 

the bull

beaten and stabbed about the neck and back

winded totally by ripping at a vision of a

red cape that only

gave, gave, gave

folded over the horn forever—

the bull was winded
spiritually
as

well.

and finally stood

disgusted and doomed

looking

LOOKING.

 

 

we had another

drink. we knew the plot, the hero, the whole

fucking thing. the sword went

in.

 

 

but it wasn’t

over.

the bull stood there.

and with the sword cutting his vitals

they came up.

 

 

4 or 5 Mexicans with dirty

behinds. including the

mat.

and they turned

him. flicked their capes at

him. punched him on the

nose.

 

 

still he wouldn’t

fall.

they were trying to push him into death

but he was hanging

in.

 

 

and every now and then

the head would remember

and give a lunge of

horn and

they would step back

remembering their own deaths.

 

 

then the mat came up

pulled the sword

out, stuck it home

again.

 

 

still no good.

the bull would not go

down.

 

 

we had another drink.

 

 

“you see,” said Harry, “they keep turning him. that

sword is cutting him. every time they make him move,

the sword cuts again.”

 

 

finally somebody took his foot and

kicked the bull over and the bull

fell down.

but still

it wasn’t any

good.

the bull kept kicking his

legs, trying to get

up. he wouldn’t

quit.

 

 

so then a little fat chap came

out. he was all dressed in white and wore a little

white butcher’s cap. he seemed quite

angry.

he had a short blade and walked up

and very angry and quick

he chopped and chopped and chopped and

chopped. it appeared that he was chopping at the

bull’s head, his

brain.

 

 

the bull couldn’t get at the boy in the

butcher’s cap. he had to

take it. finally one of the chops

took.

 

 

you could SEE the bull

die. the bull gave it

up. the crowd

cheered.

 

 

Harry took a

drink, that was the end of that

pint. and that

matador.

“what’s the name of the next

bull?” I asked

Harry.

 

 

“I don’t know. the light is

bad.”

 

 

anyhow, the next bull came

out.

 

 

we had one more pint and the

drive back in.