Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit (5 page)

 

I opened the door of this shanty and there she lay

there she lay

my love

across the back of a man in a dirty undershirt.

I was rough tough easy-with-money-Charley (that’s me)

and I awakened both of them

like God

and when she was awake

she started screaming, “Hank, Hank!” (that’s my other name)

“take me away from this son of a bitch!

I hate him I love you!”

 

 

of course, I was wise enough not to believe any of

this and I sat down and said,

“I need a drink, my head hurts and I need a

drink.”

 

 

this is the way love works, you see, and then we all sat there

drinking the whiskey and I was

perfectly satisfied

and then he reached over and handed me a five,

“that’s all that’s left of what she took, that’s all that’s left

of what she took from you.”

 

 

I was no golden-winged angel ripped up through

boxtops

I took the five and left them in there

and I walked up the alley

to Alvarado street

and I turned in left

at the first

bar.

 

 

o, just give me a little atomic bomb

not too much

just a little

enough to kill a horse in the street

but there aren’t any horses in the street

 

 

well, enough to knock the flowers from a bowl

but I don’t see any

flowers in a

bowl

 

 

enough then

to frighten my love

but I don’t have any

love

 

 

well

give me an atomic bomb then

to scrub in my bathtub

like a dirty and lovable child

 

 

(I’ve got a bathtub)

 

 

just a little atomic bomb, general,

with pugnose

pink ears

smelling like underclothes in

July

 

 

do you think I’m crazy?

I think you’re crazy

too

so the way you think:

send me one before somebody else

does.

 

 

he’s 17.

mother, he said, how do I crack an

egg?

 

 

all right, she said to me, you don’t have to

sit there looking like that.

 

 

oh, mother, he said, you broke the yoke.

I can’t eat a broken yoke.

 

 

all right, she said to me, you’re so tough,

you’ve been in the slaughterhouses, factories,

the jails, you’re so god damned tough,

but all people don’t have to be like you,

that doesn’t make everybody else wrong and you

right.

 

 

mother, he said, can you bring me some cokes

when you come home from work?

 

 

look, Raleigh, she said, can’t you get the cokes

on your bike, I’m tired after

work.

 

 

but, mama, there’s a hill.

 

 

what hill, Raleigh?

 

 

there’s a hill,

it’s there and I have to peddle over

it.

 

 

all right, she said to me, you think you’re so

god damned tough. you worked on a railroad track

gang, I hear about it every time you get drunk:

“I worked on a railroad track gang.”

well, I said, I did.

 

 

I mean, what difference does it make?

everybody has to work somewhere.

 

 

mama, said the kid, will you bring me those

cokes?

 

 

I really like the kid. I think he’s very

gentle. and once he learns how to crack an

egg he may do some

unusual things. meanwhile

I sleep with his mother

and try to stay out of

arguments.

 

 

you knifed me, he said, you told
Pink Eagle

not to publish me.

oh hell, Manny, I said, get off it.

 

 

these poets are very sensitive

they have more sensitivity than talent,

I don’t know what to do with them.

 

 

just tonight the phone rang and

it was Bagatelli and Bagatelli said

Clarsten phoned and Clarsten was pissed

because we hadn’t mailed him the

anthology, and Clarsten blamed me

for not mailing the anthology

and furthermore Clarsten

claimed I was trying to do him

in, and he was very

angry. so said

Bagatelli.

 

 

you know, I’m really beginning to feel like

a literary power

I just lean back in my chair and roll cigarettes

and stare at the walls

and I am given credit for the life and death of

poetic careers.

at least I’m given credit for the

death part.

 

 

actually these boys are dying off without my

help. The sun has gone behind the cloud.

I have nothing to do with the workings.

I smoke Prince Albert, drink Schlitz

and copulate whenever possible. believe in my

innocence and I might consider

yours.

 

 

the ladies of summer will die like the rose

and the lie

 

 

the ladies of summer will love

so long as the price is not

forever

 

 

the ladies of summer

might love anybody;

they might even love you

as long as summer

lasts

 

 

yet winter will come to them

too

 

 

white snow and

a cold freezing

and faces so ugly

that even death

will turn away—

wince—

before taking

them.

 

 

she’s young, she said,

but look at me,

I have pretty ankles,

and look at my wrists, I have pretty

wrists

o my god,

I thought it was all working,

and now it’s her again,

every time she phones you go crazy,

you told me it was over

you told me it was finished,

listen, I’ve lived long enough to become a

good woman,

why do you need a bad woman?

you need to be tortured, don’t you?

you think life is rotten if somebody treats you

rotten it all fits,

doesn’t it?

tell me, is that it? do you want to be treated like a

piece of shit?

and my son, my son was going to meet you.

I told my son

and I dropped all my lovers.

I stood up in a cafe and screamed

I’M IN LOVE,

and now you’ve made a fool of me…

 

 

I’m sorry, I said, I’m really sorry.

 

 

hold me, she said, will you please hold me?

 

 

I’ve never been in one of these things before, I said,

these triangles…

 

 

she got up and lit a cigarette, she was trembling all

over. she paced up and down, wild and crazy. she had

a small body. her arms were thin, very thin and when

she screamed and started beating me I held her

wrists and then I got it through the eyes: hatred,

centuries deep and true. I was wrong and graceless and

sick. all the things I had learned had been wasted.

there was no living creature as foul as I

and all my poems were

false.

 

 

this is not just an apple

this is an experience

red green yellow

with underlying pits of white

wet with cold water

I bite into it

christ, a white doorway…

 

 

another bite

chewing

while thinking of an old witch

choking to death on an apple skin—

a childhood story.

 

 

I bite deeply

chew and swallow

 

 

there is a feeling of waterfalls

and endlessness

 

 

there is a mixture of electricity and

hope.

 

 

yet now

halfway through the apple

some depressive feelings begin

 

 

it’s ending

I’m working toward the core

afraid of seeds and stems

 

 

there’s a funeral march beginning in Venice,

a dark old man has died after a lifetime of pain

 

 

I throw away the apple early

as a girl in a white dress walks by my window

followed by a boy half her size

in blue pants and striped

shirt

 

 

I leave off a small belch

and stare at a dirty

ashtray.

 

 

he was in the upper grandstand

at the end

where they made their stretch moves

after coming off the curve.

 

 

he was a small man

pink, bald, fat

in his 60’s.

 

 

he was playing a violin

he was playing classical music on

his violin

and the horseplayers ignored him.

 

 

Banker Agent won the first race

and he played his violin.

 

 

Can Fly won the 3rd race and

he continued to play his violin.

 

 

I went to get a coffee and when I came back

he was still playing, and he was still playing

after Boomerang won the 4th.

 

 

nobody stopped him

nobody asked him what he was doing

nobody applauded.

 

 

after Pawee won the 5th

he continued

the music falling over the edge of the

grandstand and into the

wind and sun.

 

 

Stars and Stripes won the 6th

and he played some more

and Staunch Hope got up on the inside

to take the 7th

and the violin player worked away

and when Lucky Mike won at 4 to 5 in the 8th

he was still making music.

 

 

after Dumpty’s Goddess took the last

and they began their long slow walk to their cars

beaten and broke again

the violin player continued

sending his music after them

and I sat there listening

we were both alone up there and

when he finished I applauded.

the violin player stood up

faced me and bowed.

then he put his fiddle in the case

got up and walked down the stairway.

 

 

I allowed him a few minutes

and then I got up

and began the long slow walk to my car.

it was getting into evening.