Futile Efforts (48 page)

I suspect that poetry writing does something for Pic that fiction writing doesn't. There's an intensity at work in his poetry that echoes the emotional drive behind a lot of his fiction, but it's not quite the same thing. He's a master stylist, but I can't help but think that his style is so sharp because of the struggle he's endured that all poets must endure: the struggle with language and meaning and the self contemplating its own existence through those meager tools. Poetry isn't a slam for Pic so much as it is a wrestling match. He wrestles with words but works without the safe ropes and boundaries of narrative or storytelling that keep a writer in the ring. Some of these poems
piledrive
language into the ground. Some of them shift the dire grappling into a hypnotic dance. I'm glad this section is in this larger collection of Pic's best work, because it gives us an insight into a master taking meaning to the mat, and looking up at us -- and into himself -- afterward, eyes ablaze in that nightmare space where he (and we) will inevitably come face to face with "me and someone just like me."

I'll get out of the way and let "the terse verse do its thing" to us. Turn the page and listen -- really listen -- to what he has to say.

You're already in the ring and he's coming right at you.

–Michael A.
Arnzen
, author of
GRAVE MARKINGS
,
GORELETS
, and
100 JOLTS

by Tom Piccirilli

I was trying to find the Empire State Building–

it's right there in the sky, no way to miss it,

but somehow I did–I'm walking but don't recognize

any of the street names.
 
I mean,

c'mon...Gansevoort Street?

Somebody's gotta be fucking with me...

and I'm getting the killer glare from everyone

who passes by–I turn a corner and she's on me–

sweet, slim, got her hair in a ponytail,

wearing fishnets,

some kind of shiny plastic skirt, these shoes

with...Jesus!...with four inch heels,

and she still only comes up

to about my shoulder.
 
She asks if I want

a date,

and I start thinking, What's showing

at the movies?
 
Any good restaurants around here?

How far are we from Lincoln Center?
 
Might

she enjoy the Opera?

She asks if I'm a fop and I say,

Hell no, I'm a hundred percent

Italian-American red-blooded hetero male, baby!

Oh...a cop!

I'm still on the date question, wondering,

Is Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey at the Garden?

I imagine her with a pretzel in one hand

and one of those

little spinning blue flashlights in the other.

She says, half-n-half is only $50.
 
It'll make me scream,

or we can do the whole thing and go

around the world for $200.

I look at her trying hard

not to show exactly how anal-retentive

I am about things like this,

but finally I've just got to ask,

If half is $50

and the other half is $50,

shouldn't the whole thing only be $100?

She asks if I'm from Idaho or Kansas

or one of those fucked-up cornfield places,

and I tell her, No, across the river.

I live on Long Island, about 50

minutes away by train.

She says she'll shove a lit candle up her ass

for an extra $40.
 
Or I can cream on her chest

and wipe off in her hair for an extra $50.

Or I can pee on her in the shower

for $500.

It's a dream that dies hard, but

I'm beginning to realize

that maybe

the circus is out.

by Tom Piccirilli

Her sister called and told me to get over there right now,

something wasn't right.
 
There was a panic in her throat

I'd never heard before so I hiked it down there,

thirty blocks in the killing summer heat

at 2am, knocked and could hear her

in
there
sort of humming to herself,

giggling, the kind of giggle that sets

the iceberg loose down your back.

I thought I could be a movie lead and kick the door in–

tried it three times and could feel

my Achilles tendon about to go.
 
I limped four flights down

to the super's apartment in the basement.
 
He said the door

was probably open, she always left her door open,

did I even try the door?
 
I clambered back up the stairs

and tried the knob and walked in.

There were all kinds of pills and powders around,

but she seemed calm in the center of the bed,

writing in a marble notebook, the tip of her miraculous tongue

jutting from the corner of her mouth.
 
She looked all right

but never glanced up.
 
I started to say her name

and she cut that giggle free again.

It was August, maybe 99 degrees in the room, and still

I shivered

like they were doing the Tarantella on my grave.

Beside her were five other marble notebooks,

a college ruled yellow pad,

some scrap paper, all of it covered.

I thought, this is either a magnum opus

or a madhouse mess.

I grabbed the notes and sifted through them,

seeing page after page of indecipherable scrawls

with an occasional word appearing

here and there:

EXPIATION

EFFECT

BEGET

GRACE

REDRESS

BREEDING

and a few times, among the incoherence, my name.

Stick figures that had been gone over so many times

that they'd shredded the pages and must've bled the black pens dry.

She wouldn't stop.
 
I took her by the shoulders

and she wouldn't stop.

I outweighed her by 80 pounds and I put myself to the test.

I couldn't force her back an inch,

and she still wouldn't stop.
 
I talked, I whispered,

I went on, snapping my fingers in front of her nose

and she never looked up.
 
I found the sister's number

and gave her a call.
 
She said sit tight.

She must've known, they all

must've known, because an hour later the boys came

by and gave her a needle

and she fell over like she'd been shot by a sniper

from across the street.
 
They packed her up

and dumped her on the stretcher

and left without a word.

It is something to say you've been to the rim

and looked in and felt the black ocean

trying to haul you down.
 
It is something to say you've

been depressed, that you have issues you can't get over,

that you are too sensitive, that you have anxiety attacks,

that you need the feel-good legal drugs.
 
That you've visited

the psychiatrist, that you read the bestselling self-help books.

It's something else to be

in the presence of madness

and know four nights ago

you were in bed with it.

by Tom Piccirilli

The cab driver asks, Where you from, man?
 
And I tell him, Right

here, been away for a while, but I'm back.

Why?

To bury my mother.

Oh, he goes, my heart grieves and is with you, I buried my old lady too,

right up here, this way—

as we approached
 
a cemetery that was shrugging over the narrow city streets,

some of the gravestones toppling down the hills to land, crashing, in

the middle of barren sidewalks

—she's right up the block, my Mama, she ever get up out of the ground,

first thing she gonna see is the whores on 46
^th
, they hang around that area,

give head in the alley.
 
Now me, I might not mind it much, but Ma, she a good

Christian woman, when Jesus come back to take all the souls to paradise,

my Mama, she gonna catch sight of the devil's work

in progress.

We were quiet for a couple of blocks

and he turned to ask, Hey man, where you

going again?

46
^th
, I say, thinking of the bottom of hell,

you can let me off

at the end of the alley.

by Tom Piccirilli

Who is this? he asks.

You called me, man, I tell him.
 
Who do you want?

My mother, he says.

She's not here.

I know that.
 
She's dead, she's been dead

for almost three years.

Mine too, I say, and he's suddenly crying,

and the sound of his weeping makes him
sob
even worse

because he's ashamed and humiliated by more

than he can handle,

by more than he can ever hope to understand.

I don't ask him why

since I already know.
 
It's not an easy answer–

the shame goes back forever, back to being a brat,

back to being a bitter young man, to all the days

he didn't say thank you, failed to appreciate,

refused to forgive,

hoarded his kind words,

snarled instead of spoke, dismissed