Futile Efforts (54 page)

the same face. We were all lined up together on .re,

shoulder to shoulder, bright eyes even brighter,

burning, phosphorous, at the beginning of the race

before the many wrecks.

The parking lot is slowly emptying, everyone's

finally leaving this place, and soon it'll be your turn to go.

We take turns, you know, passing around the luck.

There are things unsaid that will never be said,

until we lose

ourselves and live (you thought I'd say "until we are dead").

The gears have slipped, our tongues have slipped—it happens

like that when we're caught in the grip of October cruelty,

and your choke is let out, the throttling won't take long

with such a thin neck.

In this dark what matters most

are these staggering concerns

of the heart, but we cannot get ourselves out of park,

and the car won't start.

How to Make It Through a Friday Night

Without Biting Your Tongue in Two

I never got blind drunk for pleasure, not once—

the taste of whiskey made me want to pull out

my own fillings, squeeze the bar rail until

I'd scratched up the brass like digging gold coins

out of my own ass—I'd pour the rum down

faster than a sword-swallower seeking to pierce

his guts the hard way, from the deep inside,

where all your locked-closet fears hide—

the gang would laugh and eye the girls, sip their shots

slowly, acting as if this was pertinent, held meaning,

that this might somehow be action, motion,

vision, a step on the stairway to something

far greater than themselves and their fathers—

and me, nervous, sometimes trembling, the vague

world growing more blurry each hour,

my glasses dirty with ash, the beer bottles

sweating no worse than us,

mirrors bearing unknown faces smiling

our same drunken grins. I held my breath in

and gulped tequila the way that can kill a man.

It was stupid but sane, the shortest line

to oblivion—they'd tell me, later, how I danced

and how I ran

from women, from the cops,

once from my own mother,

down the streets laughing and howling,

dipping into pools of strangers,

waking up—sometimes in midsentence—

lying beside a half-clothed half-beauty, my teeth

marks on her tits, my pants off but my shoes on,

the room too dim to read her eyes,

as her fist tightened in my chest hair

until it felt like a hundred spiders

were biting me there, and she'd talk

of an ex-husband who didn't pay child support,

the baby at her sister's, the classes in psychology,

the poetry of the Romantic lunatics, and me

still no worse for wear, but awash

with the unbearable unwillingness to fail.

And I'd wonder where the hell are my pants? My

keys? Needing badly to take a piss, searching for

a pattern to my own ensconced misery—too blind

to ever see,

and she'd ask, "Do you want a drink?

You really seem to like to drink…"—and

I'd say yes, of course, thanks, because

although half the night was gone

half the night still lay in wait before me.

My First Groupie and How Much I Love Her

Despite the Failed Assassination Attempt

I gave a reading last week, the first one in a while,

fairly big crowd, rows of well-scrubbed faces, a couple

of old ladies in front, the lean teens in back unsure

of what to expect, staring at me and wondering aloud,

Is this what passes for a literary figure

now?…did he know Kerouac, Steinbeck,

Heller, when he was young?…(I didn't)…does he

sip coffee with Vonnegut or Barth? (I don't).

Doing a pretty poor job of hiding the traces

of petulance from their peevish pierced tongues.

And me,

there reading some of the horror, monsters rising

from the back seats of wary campers, setting the scene

of where a band of killers lurk, throwing

in some pages of the new mystery, even a little

poetry—the terse verse doing it's thing, the way

it's supposed to do, like oil, replete, until a few

of the self-deprecating jokes started to work.

And the rhythm of my voice became the cadence

of the room, our heartbeats—for a second there—

all in synch, the circuit complete. Soon, a tenderloin

nineteen-year-old stood in the last row, the light

framing her full porcelain features like angelic

illumination, and her lips parted with all the beauty

and wisdom of mad existence calmed to living

clarity. I sat back and smiled, angled my chin at her

with an air of familiarity, understanding that, yes,

we're all in this as one, and there's no better way

to do it.

But perfection is easily shattered

as I finally noticed what others had before me,

while the snickers and chuckles grew. One

of the old ladies had conked out

and lay sprawled in her chair snoring,

purse open between her spindly legs,

pantyhose rolled down to mid-calf, hat carefully

pinned to her white hair, drool dripping

from Billy goat chin, blue knuckles in a fist.

And me,

supposedly in charge, trying not to lose focus, I

stepped forward and touched her on the elbow

and the wrist. Now

here's the important part:

of how she shot up, snorting, stammering, startled

all to hell, and her purse slipped from the perched

wedge of her knobby knees, fell to the floor, spilling

the contents all over the place—and there,

among the tissues and licorice, the yellowed receipts

and coupons, photos, loose change, the denture grip,

flipped a nickel-plated .22, bright as murder.

Jesus, what now,

you have to strip-search the grandmas

in bookstores, is that what it's come to? As she sputtered,

hoisting herself into my arms, shrieking, "You're my favorite

writer! Heaven bless you! Bless your sweet soul!"

And I muttered and I'm thinking,

For fuck's sake, lady, are you going to put two

in my forehead now, for what? What'd I do?

The rest of them crying and running, my books

stomped into the carpet, the manager cowering

and giving me teary-eyed looks.

Until granny finally stopped and scooped the gun,

lunged, and there I was, tensing up, figuring,

So this is how it ends, this is it, plugged

by the old broad between the romance section

and the restrooms,

shit. Hoping to Christ,

that she wasn't some elderly women's libber who'd feel

compelled to shoot me in the nuts first, god damn it,

leave me something, lady.

As she cried, "I love your books! Bless you!" and doing

a sort of jig, shaking her fanny, the way the groupies

are supposed to do, and with that last shout,

she .
ed
, beat her .at septuagenarian feet

out of the store, hat still perfectly

tilted on her head, and I thought,

Well hell maybe

at last they've finally given me something

to write about.

In any case, this much is forever true,

I'll always remember you, baby.

Why I Can't Stand Behind Some People, And

Why You Ought to Be Scared About It

He's pure leather slickness with the face of a Greek myth,

quiet but smoldering ember-eyed imposing,

young enough to seem hip and swiftly adolescent, shouldered

with some of our greatest, standing a touch taller

than any of them now. Rock god demeanor with debonair

.air, just enough curl to his lip to show disdain

for those who know about it. The girls sway in their seats,

sigh and coo and rush for his touch, all of them swimming

in heat, the flashes go off every second or two

like fires in his bacchanal eyes.

But see,

all of that is all right. It's this that gets me:

how we're in the hallway passing each other one night,

and I nod, give him the grin that says,

"I'm glad you succeeded at least, that you

clawed yourself up from the muck and that you're riding

the good luck all the way to the end, even if it's not me,"

and he gives me this slow turn,

you know the one,

that burning turn, Adonis features loading the loathing,

that finally learning to burn turn, repulsed, sickened,

insulted, revolted,

offended, disgusted, and antipathy rises

from him like the stink of city sewers

as he goes silently on his way.

So now,

I've got this small viper in me growing,

every hour, every minute, as he prowls the halls

with the bounty of the beautiful, the treasure

trove of love and wanting,

the respectful bowing,

the ancients in some instances kowtowing, chicks

waiting to juggle his balls,

and me with another sort of venom

pulsing inside my wrists, as I turn the corner