Burning in Water, Drowing in Flame (10 page)

he hooked to the body hard

took it well

and loved to fight

had seven in a row and a small fleck

over one eye,

and then he met a kid from Camden

with arms thin as wires—

it was a good one,

the safe lions roared and threw money;

they were both up and down many times,

but he lost that one

and he lost the rematch

in which neither of them fought at all,

hanging on to each other like lovers through the boos,

and now he’s over at Mike’s

changing tires and oil and batteries,

the fleck over the eye

still young,

but you don’t ask him,

you don’t ask him anything

except maybe

you think it’s going to rain?

or

you think the sun’s gonna come out?

to which he’ll usually answer

hell no,

but you’ll have your important tank of gas

and drive off.

these boys have got class

they ought to make kings

out of old men

rolling cigarettes

in rooms small enough

to recognize

a single shadow;

for them

all has gone away

like a light under the

door

yet

they recognize and

bear the absence;

tricked and slugged to

zero

they wait on death

with the temperate patience of

a mother teaching her child

to eat;

for them, everything has

run away

like a rose in the mouth

of a hog;

the burning of cities

must have been

like this.

but like trucks of garbage

shaking with love

these boys

might

rise like Lorca

out of the road

with one more poem,

rise like

Lazarus to

gaze upon the

still living female,

and then

get drunk

drunk

until it all

falls apart

so sad

again.

I mean, I just slept

I awoke with a fly on my elbow and

I named the fly Benny

then I killed him

and then I got up and looked in the

mailbox

and there was some kind of warning from the

government

but since there wasn’t anybody standing in the bushes with

a bayonet

I tore it up

and went back to bed and looked up at the ceiling

and I thought, I really like this,

I’m just going to lie here for another ten

minutes

and I lay there for another ten minutes

and I thought,

it doesn’t make sense, I’ve got so many things to

do but I’m going to lie here another

half hour,

and I stretched

stretched

and I watched the sun through the small leaves of a tree

outside, and I didn’t have any wonderful thoughts,

I didn’t have any immortal thoughts,

and that was the best part

and it got a little hot

and I threw the blankets off and slept—

but a damned dream:

I was on the train again

on that same 5 hour round-trip to the track,

sitting by the window,

past the same sad ocean, China out there mouthing

peculiarities in the back of my

brain, and then somebody sat next to me

and talked about
horses

mothballs of talk that ripped me apart like

death, and then I was there

again: the horses running like something shown on a

screen and the jockeys very white in the face

and it didn’t matter who finally

won and everybody knew

it, the ride back in the dream was the same as the ride

back in reality:

black tons of night around

the same mountains ashamed of being

there, the sea again, again,

the train heading like a cock through a needle’s

eye

and I had to get up and go to the urinal

and I hated to get up and go to the urinal

because somebody had thrown paper, some loser had thrown paper

into the toilet again and it wouldn’t

flush, and when I came back out

everybody had nothing to do but look at my

face

and I am so tired

that they know when they see my face

that I hate

them

and then they hate me

and want to

kill me

but don’t.

I woke up but since there wasn’t anybody

over my bed

to tell me I was doing

wrong

I slept some

more.

when I woke up this time

it was almost

evening. people were coming in from work.

I got up and sat in a chair and watched them

coming in. they didn’t look so good.

even the young girls didn’t look so good as when they

left.

and the men came in: hatchet men, killers, thieves, con-men,

the whole bunch, and their faces were more horrible than any

halloween masks ever devised.

I found a blue spider in the corner and killed him with a

broom.

I looked at the people a while more and then I got tired and

stopped looking and fried myself a couple of eggs and sat down

and had some tea and bread with it.

I felt fine.

then I took a bath and went back to

bed.

she writes

continually

like a long nozzle

spraying

the air,

and she argues

continually;

there is nothing

I can say

that is really not’

something else,

so,

I stop saying;

and finally

she argues herself

out the door

saying

something like—

I’m not
trying
to

impress myself

upon you.

but I know

she will be

back, they always

come back.

and

at 5 p.m.

she was knocking at the door.

I let her in.

I won’t stay long, she said,

if you don’t want me.

it’s all right, I said,

I’ve got to take a

bath.

she walked into the kitchen and

began on the

dishes.

it’s like being married:

you accept

everything

as if

it hadn’t happened.

I used to hold my social security card

up in the air,

he told me,

but I was so small

they couldn’t see it,

all those big

guys around.

you mean the place with the

big green screen?

I asked.

yeah. well, anyhow, I finally got on

the other day

picking tomatoes, and Jesus Christ,

I couldn’t get anywhere

it was too hot, too hot

and I couldn’t get anything in my sack

so I lay under the truck

in the shade and drank

wine. I didn’t make a

dime.

have a drink, I said.

sure, he said.

two big women came in and

I mean BIG

and they sat next to

us.

shot of red-eye, one of them

said to the bartender.

likewise, said the other.

they pulled their dresses up

around their hips and

swung their legs.

um, umm. I think I’m going mad, I told

my friend from the tomato fields.

Jesus, he said, Jesus and Mary, I can’t

believe what I see.

it’s all

there, I said.

you a fighter? the one next to me

asked.

no, I said.

what happened to your

face?

automobile accident on the San Berdoo

freeway. some drunk jumped the divider. I was

the drunk.

how old
are
you, daddy?

old enough to slice the melon, I said,

tapping my cigar ashes into my beer to give me

strength.

can you buy a melon? she asked.

have you ever been chased across the Mojave and

raped?

no, she said.

I pulled out my last 20 and with an old man’s

virile abandon ordered

four drinks.

both girls smiled and pulled their dresses

higher, if that was possible.

who’s your friend? they asked.

this is Lord Chesterfield, I told them.

pleased ta meetcha, they

said.

hello, bitches, he answered.

we walked through the 3rd street tunnel

to a green hotel. the girls had a

key.

there was one bed and we all got

in. I don’t know who got

who.

the next morning my friend and I

were down at the Farm Labor Market

on San Pedro Street

holding up and waving our social

security cards.

they couldn’t see

his.

I was the last one on the truck out. a big woman stood

up against me. she smelled like

port wine.

honey, she asked, whatever happened to your

face?

fair grounds, a dancing bear who

didn’t.

bullshit, she said.

maybe so, I said, but get your hand out

from around my

balls. everybody’s looking.

when we got to the

fields the sun was

really up

and the world

looked

terrible.

I met a genius on the train

today

about 6 years old,

he sat beside me

and as the train

ran down along the coast

we came to the ocean

and then he looked at me

and said,

it’s not pretty.

it was the first time I’d

realized

that.

it is the man you’ve never seen who

keeps you going,

the one who might arrive

someday.

he isn’t out on the streets or

in the buildings or in the

stadiums,

or if he’s there

I’ve missed him somehow.

he isn’t one of our presidents

or statesmen or actors.

I wonder if he’s there.

I walk down the streets

past drugstores and hospitals and

theatres and cafes

and I wonder if he is there.

I have looked almost half a century

and he has not been seen.

a living man, truly alive,

say when he brings his hands down

from lighting a cigarette

you see his eyes

like the eyes of a tiger staring past

into the wind.

but when the hands come down

it is always the

other eyes

that are there

always always.

and soon it will be too late for me

and I will have lived a life

with drugstores, cats, sheets, saliva,

newspapers, women, doors and other assortments,

but nowhere

a living man.