What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (6 page)

it's just a slow day moving into a slow night.

it doesn't matter what you do

everything just stays the same.

the cats sleep it off, the dogs don't

bark,

it's just a slow day moving into a slow night.

there's nothing even dying,

it's just more waiting through a slow day moving

into a slow night.

you don't even hear the water running,

the walls just stand there

and the doors don't open.

it's just a slow day moving into a slow night.

the rain has stopped,

you can't hear a siren anywhere,

your wristwatch has a dead battery,

the cigarette lighter is out of fluid,

it's just a slow day moving into a slow night,

it's just more waiting through a slow day moving

into a slow night

like tomorrow's never going to come

and when it does

it'll be the same damn thing.

sleepy now

at 4 a.m.

I hear the siren

of a white

ambulance,

then a dog

barks

once

in this tough-boy

Christmas

morning.

probably from the bellybutton or from the shoe under the

bed, or maybe from the mouth of the shark or from

the car crash on the avenue that leaves blood and memories

scattered on the grass.

she comes from love gone wrong under an

asphalt moon.

she comes from screams stuffed with cotton.

she comes from hands without arms

and arms without bodies

and bodies without hearts.

she comes out of cannons and shotguns and old victrolas.

she comes from parasites with blue eyes and soft voices.

she comes out from under the organ like a roach.

she keeps coming.

she's inside of sardine cans and letters.

she's under your fingernails pressing blue and flat.

she's the signpost on the barricade

smeared in brown.

she's the toy soldiers inside your head

poking their lead bayonets.

she's the first kiss and the last kiss and

the dog's guts spilling like a river.

she comes from somewhere and she never stops

coming.

me, and that

old woman:

sorrow.

the area dividing the brain and the soul

is affected in many ways by

experience—

some lose all mind and become soul:

insane.

some lose all soul and become mind:

intellectual.

some lose both and become:

accepted.

soon after Kennedy was shot

I heard this ringing of bells

an electrically charged ringing of bells

and I thought, it can't be the church

on the corner

too many people there

hated Kennedy.

I liked him

and walked to the window

thinking, well, maybe everybody is tired of

cowardly gunmen,

maybe the Russian Orthodox Church

up the street

is saying this

with their bells?

but the sound got nearer and nearer

and approached very slowly,

and I thought, what is it?

it was coming right up to my window

and then I saw it:

a small square vehicle

powered by a tiny motor

coming 2 m.p.h.

up the street:

KNIVES SHARPENED

was scrawled in red crayon

on the plywood sides

and inside sat an old man

looking straight ahead.

the ladies did not come out with their knives

the ladies were liberated and sharpened their own

knives.

the plywood box

crept down the lonely street

and with much seeming agony

managed to turn right at Normandie Blvd.

and vanish.

my own knives were dull

and
I
was not liberated

and there certainly would be more

cowardly gunmen.

much later I thought

I could still hear the

bells.

red flower of love

cut at the stem

passion has its own

way

and hatred too.

the curtain blows open

and the sky is black

out there tonight.

across the way

a man and a woman

standing up against a darkened

wall,

the red moon

whirls,

a mouse runs along

the windowsill

changing colors.

I am alone in torn levis

and a white sweat shirt.

she's with her man now

in the shadow of that wall

and as he enters her

I draw upon my

cigarette.

amazing, how grimly we hold onto our

misery,

ever defensive, thwarted by

the forces.

amazing, the energy we burn

fueling our anger.

amazing, how one moment we can be

snarling like a beast, then

a few moments later,

forgetting what or

why.

not hours of this or days or

months or years of this

but decades,

lifetimes

completely used up,

given over

to the pettiest

rancor and

hatred.

finally

there is nothing here for death to

take

away.

in New York in those days they had

a system at the track

where you bought a ticket

and tried to pick 5 winners in a row

and Harry took $1000

and went up to the window and said,

“1, 8, 3, 7, 5.”

and that's the way they came in

and so he took his wife to Spain

with all that money

and his wife fell for the mayor of this little

village in Spain and fucked him

and the marriage was over

and Harry came back to Brooklyn broke

and mutilated

and he has been a little crazy ever

since, but

Harry, don't despair

for you are a genius

for who else had enough pure faith

and enough courage

to go up to the window

and against all the gods of logic

say to the man at the window:

“1, 8, 3, 7, 5”?

you did it.

yes, she got the mayor

but you're the real winner

forever.

vain vanilla ladies strutting

while Van Gogh did it to

himself.

girls pulling on silk

hose

while Van Gogh did it to

himself

in the field

unkissed, and

worse.

I pass him on the street:

“how's it going, Van?”

“I dunno, man,” he says

and walks on.

there is a blast of color:

one more creature

dizzy with love.

he said,

then,

I want to leave.

and they look at his paintings

and love him

now.

for that kind of love

he did the right

thing

as for the other kind of love

it never arrived.

it is hard to find a man

whose poems do not

finally disappoint you.

Vallejo has never disappointed

me in that way.

some say he finally starved to

death.

however

his poems about the terror of being

alone

are somehow gentle and

do not

scream.

we are all tired of most

art.

Vallejo writes as a man

and not as an

artist.

he is beyond

our understanding.

I like to think of Vallejo still

alive

and walking across a

room, I find

the sound of Cesar Vallejo's

steadfast tread

imponderable.

they've got us in the cage

ruined of grace and senses

and the heart roars like a lion

at what they've done to us.

constipated writers

squatting over their machines

on hot nights

while their wives talk on the

telephone.

while the TV plays

in the background

they squat over their machines

they light cigarettes

and hope for fame

and

beautiful young girls

or at least

something to write

about.

“yeah, Barney, he's still at the typer.

I can't disturb him.

he's working on a series of short novels for

Pinnacle
magazine. his central character is some

guy he calls ‘Bugblast.' I got a sunburn

today. I was reading a magazine in the yard

and I forgot how long I was out there…”

endless hot summer nights.

the blades of the fan tap and rattle

against the wire cage.

the air doesn't move.

it's hard to breathe.

the people out there expect miracles

continual miracles with

words.

the world is full of

constipated writers.

and eager readers who need plenty of new

shit.

it's depressing.

the lid to the great jar

opens

and out tumbles a

Christ child.

I throw it to my cat

who bats it about in the

air

but he soon tires of

the lack of

response.

it is near the end of

February in a

so far

banal year.

not a damn good war

in sight anywhere.

I light an Italian cigar,

it's slim, tastes bitter.

I inhale the space between

continents,

stretch my legs.

it's moments like

this—you can feel it

happening—that you grow

transformed

partly into something

else strange and

unnameable—

so when death comes

it can only take

part of

you.

I exhale a perfect

smoke ring

as a soprano sings to me

through the radio.

each night counts for something

or else we'd all

go mad.

many of the paperboys here in L.A.

are starting to grow

beards.

this makes them look suspiciously like bad

poets.

a paper container in front of me

says:

Martin Van Buren was the 8th president

of the U.S. from 1837 to 1841,

as I spill coffee on my new

dictionary.

the phone rings.

it is a woman who wants to talk to me.

can't they forget me?

am I that good?

the lady downstairs borrows a vacuum cleaner

from the manager and cackles her thanks.

her thanks drift up to me here

and disappear as two pigeons arrive

and sit on the roof in the

wind. vacuum is spelled very strangely,

I think, as I watch the 2 pigeons on the roof.

they sit motionless in the wind, just a few small

feathers on their bodies

lifting and falling.

the phone rings again.

“I have just about gotten over it,

I have just about gotten over

you.”

“thank you,” I say and

hang up.

it is 2 in the afternoon

I have finished my coffee and had a smoke

and now the coffee water is boiling

again. there is an original painting by

Eric Heckel

on my north wall

but there is neither joy nor sorrow here now

only the paperboys

trying to grow beards

the pigeons in the wind

and the faint sound of the vacuum cleaner.

sound of doom like an approaching

cyclone

the woman across the way

keeps scolding and

screaming

she's screaming at her child

now she's clearing her

throat

I lean forward

to get a book of matches to

light my

cigarette

then she screams again

she's beating her child

the child screams

then it's quiet

all I can hear are the

crickets

droning

planet earth: where

Christ came

and

never experienced

sex with a

woman or a

man.