Burning in Water, Drowing in Flame (8 page)

she reads to me from the
New Yorker

which I don’t buy, don’t know

how they get in here, but it’s

something about the Mafia

one of the heads of the Mafia

who ate too much and had it too easy

too many fine women patting his

walnuts, and he got fat sucking at good

cigars and young breasts and he

has these heart attacks—and so

one day somebody is driving him

in this big car along the road

and he doesn’t feel so good

and he asks the boy to stop and let

him out and the boy lays him out

along the road in the fine sunshine.

I don’t know whether it’s Crete or

Sicily or Italy proper

but he’s lying there in the sunshine

and before he dies he says:

how beautiful life can be, and

then he’s gone.

sometimes you’ve got to kill 4 or 5

thousand men before you somehow

get to believe that the sparrow

is immortal, money is piss and

that you have been wasting

your time.

this head like a saucer

decorated with everything

as lip to lip we hang

in mechanical joy;

my hands blaze with arias

but I think of books

on anatomy,

and I fall from you

as nations burn in anger…

to recover from most pitiful error

and rebuild, this is it

loss and mending

until they take us in.

the glory of a Saturday afternoon

like biting into an old peach

and you walk across the room

heavy with everything

except my love.

yesterday drunken Alice

gave me

a jar of fig jam

and today she

whistles

for her cat

but

he will not

come—

he is with the horses

at a

tub of beer

or

in room 21

at the Crown Hill

Hotel

or he is at the

Crocker

Citizens National

Bank

or

he arrived in

New York City at

5:30 p.m.

with paper suitcase

and

$7.

next to Alice

in her yard

a paper goose

walks

upside down

on a carton that says:

California

Oranges.

drunken Alice whistles.

no good. no good.

work slowly.

everybody tries hard

but the

gods.

Alice goes in for a

drink, comes

out.

whistles again

all the way to a

park bench in

El Paso—

and her love comes

running out of the

bushes

bright-eyed as a

color film

and not waiting

for

Monday.

we go in

together.

ask the sidewalk painters of Paris

ask the sunlight on a sleeping dog

ask the 3 pigs

ask the paperboy

ask the music of Donizetti

ask the barber

ask the murderer

ask the man leaning against a wall

ask the preacher

ask the maker of cabinets

ask the pickpocket or the

pawnbroker or the glass blower

or the seller of manure or

the dentist

ask the revolutionist

ask the man who sticks his head in

the mouth of a lion

ask the man who will release the next

atom bomb

ask the man who thinks he’s Christ

ask the bluebird who comes home

at night

ask the peeping Tom

ask the man dying of cancer

ask the man who needs a bath

ask the man with one leg

ask the blind

ask the man with the lisp

ask the opium eater

ask the trembling surgeon

ask the leaves you walk upon

ask a rapist or a

streetcar conductor or an old man

pulling weeds in his garden

ask a bloodsucker

ask a trainer of fleas

ask a man who eats fire

ask the most miserable man you can

find in his most

miserable moment

ask a teacher of judo

ask a rider of elephants

ask a leper, a lifer, a lunger

ask a professor of history

ask the man who never cleans his

fingernails

ask a clown or ask the first face you see

in the light of day

ask your father

ask your son and

his son to be

ask me

ask a burned-out bulb in a paper sack

ask the tempted, the damned, the foolish

the wise, the slavering

ask the builders of temples

ask the men who have never worn shoes

ask Jesus

ask the moon

ask the shadows in the closet

ask the moth, the monk, the madman

ask the man who draws cartoons for

The New Yorker

ask a goldfish

ask a fern shaking to a tapdance

ask the map of India

ask a kind face

ask the man hiding under your bed

ask the man you hate the most in this

world

ask the man who drank with Dylan Thomas

ask the man who laced Jack Sharkey’s gloves

ask the sad-faced man drinking coffee

ask the plumber

ask the man who dreams of ostriches every

night

ask the ticket-taker at a freak show

ask the counterfeiter

ask the man sleeping in an alley under

a sheet of paper

ask the conquerors of nations and planets

ask the man who has just cut off his finger

ask a bookmark in the bible

ask the water dripping from a faucet while

the phone rings

ask perjury

ask the deep blue paint

ask the parachute jumper

ask the man with the bellyache

ask the divine eye so sleek and swimming

ask the boy wearing tight pants in

the expensive academy

ask the man who slipped in the bathtub

ask the man chewed by the shark

ask the one who sold me the unmatched

gloves

ask these and all those I have left out

ask the fire the fire the fire—

ask even the liars

ask anybody you please at anytime

you please on any day you please

whether it’s raining or whether

the snow is there or whether

you are stepping out onto a porch

yellow with warm heat

ask this ask that

ask the man with birdshit in his hair

ask the torturer of animals

ask the man who has seen many bullfights

in Spain

ask the owners of new Cadillacs

ask the famous

ask the timid

ask the albino

and the statesman

ask the landlords and the poolplayers

ask the phonies

ask the hired killers

ask the bald men and the fat men

and the tall men and the

short men

ask the one-eyed men, the

oversexed and undersexed men

ask the men who read all the newspaper

editorials

ask the men who breed roses

ask the men who feel almost no pain

ask the dying

ask the mowers of lawns and the attenders

of football games

ask any of these or all of these

ask ask ask and

they’ll all tell you:

a snarling wife on the balustrade is more

than a man can bear.

the virus holds

the concepts give way like rotten

shoelaces

toothache and bacon dance on the

lawn

I open a drawer to dirty

stockings

a stockbroker’s universe

steel balls flutter like

butterflies

I can feel doom like

something under the sheets with bristles

that stinks and moves

toward me

the mailman is insane and

hands me a bagful of snails

eaten inside

out

by some rat of decay

in the madhouse a man kisses the walls

and dreams of sailboating down some

cool Nile

I read about the bullfights the ballgames

the boxing matches

things continue to fight

and in the churches they play at parlor

games and peek at legs

I go outside to absolutely

nothing

a square round of orange zero

headpieces over obscene mouths that form

at me like suckerfish

good morning, nice day isn’t it?

a fat woman says

I am unable to answer

and down the sidewalk I go

shamed

unable to tell her

of the knife inside me

I do notice though the sun is shining

that the flowers are pulled up on

their strings

and I on mine:

belly, bellybutton, buttocks, bukowski

waving walking

teeth of ice with the taste of tar

tear ducts propagandized

shoes acting like shoes

I arrive on time

in the blazing midday of

mourning.

a very miraculous thing just happened:

my beerbottle flipped over backwards

and landed on its bottom on the floor,

and I have set it upon the table to foam down,

but the photos were not so lucky today

and there is a small slit along the leather

of my left shoe, but it’s all very simple:

we cannot acquire too much: there are laws

we know nothing of, all manner of nudges

set us to burning or freezing; what sets

the blackbird in the cat’s mouth

is not for us to say, or why some men

are jailed like pet squirrels

while others nuzzle in enormous breasts

through endless nights—this is the

task and the terror, and we are not

taught why. still, it’s lucky the bottle

landed straightside up, and although

I have one of wine and one of whiskey,

this foretells, somehow, a good night,

and perhaps tomorrow my nose will be longer:

new shoes, less rain, more poems.

I have been

hanging here

headless

for so long

that the body has forgotten

why

or where or when it

happened

and the toes

walk along in shoes

that do not

care

and although

the fingers

slice things and

hold things and

move things and

touch

things

such as

oranges

apples

onions

books

bodies

I am no longer

reasonably sure

what these things

are

they are mostly

like

lamplight and

fog

then often the hands will

go to the

lost head

and hold the head

like the hands of a

child

around a ball

a block

air and wood—

no teeth

no thinking part

and when a window

blows open

to a

church

hill

woman

dog

or something singing

the fingers of the hand

are senseless to vibration

because they have no

ears

senseless to color because

they have no

eyes

senseless to smell

without a nose

the country goes by as

nonsense

the continents

the daylights and evenings

shine

on my dirty

fingernails

and in some mirror

my face

a block to vanish

scuffed part of a child’s

ball

while everywhere

moves

worms and aircraft

fires on the land

tall violets in sanctity

my hands let go let go

let go