Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit (6 page)

 

I am dying of sadness and alcohol

he said to me over the bottle

on a soft Thursday afternoon

in an old hotel room by the train depot.

 

 

I have, he went on, betrayed myself with

belief, deluded myself with love

tricked myself with sex.

 

 

the bottle is damned faithful, he said,

the bottle will not lie.

 

 

meat is cut as roses are cut

men die as dogs die

love dies like dogs die,

he said.

 

 

listen, Ronny, I said,

lend me 5 dollars.

 

 

love needs too much help, he said.

hate takes care of itself.

 

 

just 5 dollars, Ronny.

 

 

hate contains truth. beauty is a facade.

 

 

I’ll pay you back in a week.

 

 

stick with the thorn

stick with the bottle

stick with the voices of old men in hotel rooms.

 

 

I ain’t had a decent meal, Ronny, for a

couple of days.

stick with the laughter and horror of death.

keep the butterfat out.

get lean, get ready.

 

 

something in my gut, Ronny, I’ll be able

to face it.

 

 

to die alone and ready and unsurprised,

that’s the trick.

 

 

Ronny, listen—

 

 

that majestic weeping you hear

will not be for

us.

 

 

I suppose not, Ronny.

 

 

the lies of centuries, the lies of love,

the lies of Socrates and Blake and Christ

will be your bedmates and tombstones

in a death that will never end.

 

 

Ronny, my poems came back from the

New York Quarterly
.

 

 

that is why they weep,

without knowing.

 

 

is that what all that noise is, I said,

my god shit.

 

 

she means well.

play the piano

she says

it’s not good for you

not to write.

 

 

she’s going for a walk

on the island

or a boatride.

I believe she’s taken a modern novel

and her reading glasses.

 

 

I sit at the window

with her electric typewriter

and watch young girls’ asses

which are attached to

young girls.

 

 

the final decadence.

 

 

I have 20 published books

and 6 cans of beer.

 

 

the tourists bob up and down in the water

the tourists walk and talk and take

photographs and

drink soft drinks.

 

 

it’s not good for me not to

write.

she’s in a boat now, a

sightseeing tour

and she’s thinking, looking

at the waves—

“it’s 2:30 p.m.

he must be writing

it’s not good for him not to write.

tonight there will be other things to do.

I hope he doesn’t drink

too much beer. he’s a much better

lover than Robert was

and the sea is beautiful.”

 

 

the night I was going to die

I was sweating on the bed

and I could hear the crickets

and there was a cat fight outside

and I could feel my soul dropping down through the

mattress

and just before it hit the floor I jumped up

I was almost too weak to walk

but I walked around and turned on all the lights

then made it back to the bed

and again my soul dropped down through the mattress

and I leaped up

just before it hit the floor

I walked around and I turned on all the lights

and then I went back to bed

and down it dropped again and

I was up

turning on all the lights

 

 

I had a 7 year old daughter

and I felt sure she didn’t want me dead

otherwise it wouldn’t have

mattered

 

 

but all that night

nobody phoned

nobody came by with a beer

my girlfriend didn’t phone

all I could hear were the crickets and it was

hot

and I kept working at it

getting up and down

until the first of the sun came through the window

through the bushes

and then I got on the bed

and the soul stayed

inside at last and

I slept.

now people come by

beating on the doors and windows

the phone rings

the phone rings again and again

I get great letters in the mail

hate letters and love letters.

everything is the same again.

 

 

there’s this blue baby and she’s sucking a

blue breast under a green vine that has

grown from the ceiling,

and further to the right

there’s a light brown girl

against a dark brown background

and she’s leaning out over a chair looking

pensive, I suppose.

my cigarette just went out

there are never any matches around here

and I get up and go into the kitchen

and light it on a 30 year old stove.

I get back without accident.

now behind me on a pink chair

is a large old-fashioned shears.

it is 15 minutes past midnight

and the hook is on the door

and over the tall twisted lamp by the bed

is a red floppy hat that is used as a lampshade

and a small dog growls at the tall cold sky outside.

there are two mattresses on the floor

and I have slept on one of those mattresses

many nights.

they say they are going to bulldoze this place

which is owned by a Japanese wrestler called Fuji.

I don’t see how it can be replaced with anything better.

 

 

she fixed the bathtub faucet and the faucet in the sink

tonight. she can’t roll a cigarette but she keeps the

plumbing bills down.

we ate some Col. Sanders chicken with coleslaw, mashed spuds,

gravy and biscuits.

it’s 23 minutes past midnight

and they are going to bulldoze this place,

I don’t mean tomorrow, I mean soon,

and the small dog growls at the sky again

and my cigarette is out again;

the love on that one mattress near the door,

the sex and the arguments and the dreams and the

conversations,

that bulldozer is going to come up missing there,

and even when it knocks down the trees and the crapper

and eats holes in the dirt driveway

it’s not going to get it all,

and when I drive by in 6 months and see the highrise

filled with 50 people with good stable incomes,

I will still remember the blue baby sucking the blue breast,

the vine through the roof, the brown girl,

the leaky faucets, the spiders and the termites,

the grey and yellow paint, the tablecloth over the front

window, and that mattress near the door.

 

 

it was on the 2nd floor on Coronado Street

I used to get drunk

and throw the radio through the window

while it was playing, and, of course,

it would break the glass in the window

and the radio would sit out there on the roof

still playing

and I’d tell my woman,

“Ah, what a marvelous radio!”

 

 

the next morning I’d take the window

off the hinges

and carry it down the street

to the glass man

who would put in another pane.

 

 

I kept throwing that radio through the window

each time I got drunk

and it would sit out there on the roof

still playing—

a magic radio

a radio with guts,

and each morning I’d take the window

back to the glass man.

 

 

I don’t remember how it ended exactly

though I do remember

we finally moved out.

there was a woman downstairs who worked in

the garden in her bathing suit

and her husband complained he couldn’t sleep nights

because of me

so we moved out

and in the next place

I either forgot to throw the radio out the window

or I didn’t feel like it

anymore.

I do remember missing the woman who worked in the

garden in her bathing suit,

she really dug with that trowel

and she put her behind up in the air

and I used to sit in the window

and watch the sun shine all over that thing

 

 

while the music played.

 

 

he’s almost 80 and they went to

visit him the other

day. he was sitting in his chair

with a burlap rug over his

lap

and when they walked in

the first thing he said was

“Don’t touch my cock!”

 

 

he had a gallon jug of

zinfandel in his

refrigerator, had just gotten off

of

5 days of

tequila.

 

 

a new $600 piano was in the center of

the room,

he’d bought it for his

son.

 

 

he’s always phoning for
me
to come over

but when I do

he’s very dull. he agrees with

everything I say and

then he goes to

sleep.

 

 

Solid State Marty.

when I’m not there

he does everything:

sets fire to the couch

pisses on his belly

sings the National Anthem.

he gets call girls over and

squirts them with

seltzer water, he

rips the telephone wire out

of the wall

 

 

but before he does

he telephones

Paris

Madrid

Tokyo

 

 

he beats dogs

cats

people

with his

silver crutch

 

 

he tells stories about

how he was a

matador

a boxer

a pimp

a friend of Ernie’s

a friend of Picasso

 

 

but when I come over

he goes to sleep

upright in his chair

grey hair rumbling down over

the silent

dumb hawk face

 

 

his son starts talking

and then it’s time

for me

to go.