Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit (9 page)

 

looked like

 

Bogart

 

sunken cheeks

 

 

chain smoker

 

 

pissed out of windows

ignored women

 

 

snarled at landlords

 

 

rode boxcars through the badlands

 

 

never missed a chance to duke it

 

 

full of roominghouse and skidrow stories

 

 

ribs showing

 

 

flat belly

 

 

walking in shoes with nails driving into his heels

 

 

looking out of windows

 

 

cigar in mouth

lips wet with beer

 

Bogart’s

 

got a beard now

 

 

he’s much older

 

 

but don’t believe the gossip:

Bogie’s not dead

yet.

 

 

sitting in a dark bedroom with 3 junkies,

female.

brown paper bags filled with trash are

everywhere.

it is one-thirty in the afternoon.

they talk about madhouses,

hospitals.

they are waiting for a fix.

none of them work.

it’s relief and foodstamps and

Medi-Cal.

 

 

men are usable objects

toward the fix.

 

 

it is one-thirty in the afternoon

and outside small plants grow.

their children are still in school.

the females smoke cigarettes

and suck listlessly on beer and

tequila

which I have purchased.

 

 

I sit with them.

I wait on my fix:

I am a poetry junkie.

 

 

they pulled Ezra through the streets

in a wooden cage.

Blake was sure of God.

Villon was a mugger.

Lorca sucked cock.

T. S. Eliot worked a teller’s cage.

 

 

most poets are swans,

egrets.

I sit with 3 junkies

at one-thirty in the afternoon.

 

 

the smoke pisses upward.

 

 

I wait.

 

 

death is a nothing jumbo.

 

 

one of the females says that she likes

my yellow shirt.

 

 

I believe in a simple violence.

 

 

this is

some of it.

 

 

my dentist is a drunk.

he rushes into the room while I’m

having my teeth cleaned:

“hey, you old fuck! you still

writing dirty stories?”

“yes.”

he looks at the nurse:

“me and this old fuck, we both used

to work for the post office down at

the terminal annex!”

the nurse doesn’t answer.

“look at us now! we got
out
of

there; we got out of that place,

didn’t we?”

“yes, yes…”

he runs off into another room.

he hires beautiful young girls,

they are everywhere.

they work a 4 day week and he drives

a yellow Caddy.

he has 8 rooms besides the waiting

room, all equipped.

the nurse presses her body against

mine, it’s unbelievable

her breasts, her thighs, her body

press against me. she picks at my teeth

and looks into my eyes:

“am I hurting you?”

“no no, go ahead!”

 

 

in 15 minutes the dentist is back:

“hey, don’t take too long!

what’s going on, anyhow?”

“Dr., this man hasn’t had his teeth

cleaned for 5 years. they’re filthy!”

“all right, finish him off! give him

another appointment!”

he runs out.

“would you like another appointment?”

she looks into my eyes.

“yes,” I tell her.

she lets her body fall full against mine

and gives me a few last scrapes.

the whole thing only costs me forty dollars

including x-rays.

 

 

but she never told me her

name.

 

 

I liked D. H. Lawrence

he could get so indignant

he snapped and he ripped

with wonderfully energetic sentences

he could lay the word down

bright and writhing

there was the stink of blood and murder

and sacrifice about him

the only tenderness he allowed

was when he bedded down his large German

wife.

I liked D. H. Lawrence—

he could talk about Christ

like he was the man next door

and he could describe Australian taxi drivers

so well you hated them

I liked D. H. Lawrence

but I’m glad I never met him

in some bistro

him lifting his tiny hot cup of

tea

and looking at me

with his worm-hole eyes.

 

 

the old girl friends still phone

some from last year

some from the year before

some from the years before that.

it’s good to have things done with

when they don’t work

it’s also good not to hate

or even forget

the person you’ve failed

with.

 

 

and I like it when they tell me

they are having luck with a man

luck with their life.

 

 

after surviving me

they have many joys due them.

I make their lives seem better

after me.

 

 

now I have given them

comparisons

new horizons

new cocks

more peace

a good future

without me.

 

 

I always hang up,

justified.

 

 

boxing matches and the racetracks

are where the guts are extracted and

rubbed into the cement

into the substance and stink of

being.

 

 

there is no peace either for the

flower or the tiger.

that’s obvious.

 

 

what is not obvious are the rules.

there are no rules.

 

 

some attempt to find rules in the teachings of

others

and adjust to that

sight.

 

 

for me

obedience to another is the decay

of self.

 

 

for though every being is similar

each being is different

 

 

and to herd our differences

under one law

degrades each

self.

 

 

the boxing matches and the racetracks are

temples of learning

 

 

as the same horse and the same man

do not always win or lose

for the same reason

so does learning

sometimes

stand still

pause or

reverse itself.

 

 

there are very very

few

guidelines.

 

 

no rules

but a hint:

 

 

watch for the lead right

and the last flash of the

tote.

 

 

are we going to the movies or not?

she asked him.

 

 

all right, he said, let’s go.

 

 

I’m not going to put any panties on

so you can finger-fuck me in the

dark, she said.

 

 

should we get buttered popcorn?

he asked.

 

 

sure, she said.

 

 

leave your panties on,

he said.

 

 

what is it? she asked.

 

 

I just want to watch the movie,

he answered.

 

 

look, she said, I could go out on

the street, there are a hundred men

out there who’d be delighted to have

me.

 

 

all right, he said, go ahead out there.

I’ll stay home and read the
National

Enquirer
.

 

 

you son of a bitch, she said, I am

trying
to build a meaningful

relationship.

 

 

you can’t build it with a hammer,

he said.

are we going to the movies or not?

she asked.

 

 

all right, he said, let’s

go…

 

 

at the corner of Western and

Franklin he put on the blinker

to make his left turn

and a man in the on-coming lane

speeded-up

as if to cut him off.

 

 

brakes grabbed. there wasn’t a

crash but there almost was one.

 

 

he cursed at the man in the other

car. the man cursed back. the

man had another person in the car with

him. it was
his
wife.

 

 

they were going to the movies

too.

 

 

I had to come to the bathroom for something

and I knocked

and you were in the tub

you had washed your face and your hair

and I saw your upper body

and except for the breasts

you looked like a girl of 5, of 8

you were gently gleeful in the water

Linda Lee.

you were not only the essence of that

moment

but of all my moments

up to then

you bathing easily in the ivory

yet there was nothing

I could tell you.

 

 

I got what I wanted in the bathroom

something

and I left.