or Stravinsky or Mozart. she boils the
eggs counting the seconds out loud: 56,
57, 58…she peels the eggs, brings
them to me in bed. after breakfast it’s
the same chair and listen to the classical
music. she’s on her first glass of
scotch and her third cigarette. I tell
her I must go to the racetrack. she’s
been here about 2 nights and 2 days. “when
will I see you again?” I ask. she
suggests that might be up to me. I
nod and Mozart plays.
numb your ass and your brain and your heart—
I was coming off an affair that had gone badly.
frankly, I was sliding down into a pit
really feeling shitty and low
when I lucked into this lady with a large bed
covered with a jeweled canopy
plus
wine, champagne, smokes, pills and
color tv.
we stayed in bed and
drank wine, champagne, smoked, popped pills
by the dozens
as I (feeling shitty and low)
tried to get over this affair that had gone
bad.
I watched the tv trying to dull my senses,
but the thing that really helped
was this very long
(specially written for tv) drama about
spies—
American spies and Russian spies, and
they were all so clever and
cool—
even their children didn’t know
their wives didn’t know, and
in a way
they hardly knew—
and I found out about counter-spies, double-spies:
guys who worked both sides, and
then this one who was a double-spy turned
into a triple-spy, it
got nicely confusing—
I don’t even think the guy who wrote the script
knew what was happening—
it went on for hours!
seaplanes rammed into icebergs,
a priest in Madison, Wisc. murdered his brother,
a block of ice was shipped in a casket to Peru
in lieu of the world’s largest diamond, and
blondes walked in and out of rooms eating
creampuffs and walnuts;
the triple-spy turned into a
quadruple-spy and everybody loved
everybody
and it went on and on
and the hours passed and
it all finally vanished like a paperclip in a
bag of trash and I
reached over and flicked off the set and
slept well for the first time
in a week and a half.
one of the hottest
she wore a platinum blond wig
and her face was rouged and powdered
and she put the lipstick on
making a huge painted mouth
and her neck was wrinkled
but she still had the ass of a young girl
and the legs were good.
she wore blue panties and I got them off
raised her dress, and with the TV flickering
I took her standing up.
as we struggled around the room
(I’m fucking the grave, I thought, I’m
bringing the dead back to life, marvelous
so marvelous
like eating cold olives at 3 a.m.
with half the town on fire)
I came.
you boys can keep your virgins
give me hot old women in high heels
with asses that forgot to get old.
of course, you leave afterwards
or get very drunk
which is the same
thing.
we drank wine for hours and watched tv
and when we went to bed.
to sleep it off.
she left her teeth in all
night long.
ashes
I got his ashes, she said, and I took them
out to sea and I scattered his ashes and
they didn’t even look like ashes
and
the urn was weighted with
green and blue pebbles…
he didn’t leave you any of his
millions?
nothing, she said.
after having to eat all those breakfasts
and lunches and dinners with him? after
listening to all his bullshit?
he was a brilliant man.
you know what I mean.
anyhow, I got the ashes. and you fucked
my sisters.
I never fucked your sisters.
yes, you did.
I fucked one of them.
which one?
the lesbian, I said, she bought me dinner and drinks,
I had very little choice.
I’m going, she said.
don’t forget your bottle.
she went in and got it.
there’s so little to you, she said, that when you die and
they burn you they’ll have to add almost all green and
blue pebbles.
all right, I said.
I’ll see you in 6 months! she screamed and slammed the door.
well, I thought, I guess in order to get rid of her I’ll have
to fuck her other sister. I walked into the bedroom and started
looking for phone numbers. all I remembered was that she
lived in San Mateo and had a very good.
job.
fuck
she pulled her dress off
over her head
and I saw the panties
indented somewhat into the
crotch.
it’s only human.
now we’ve got to do it.
I’ve got to do it
after all that bluff.
it’s like a party—
two trapped
idiots.
under the sheets
after I have snapped
off the light
her panties are still
on. she expects an
opening performance.
I can’t blame her. but
wonder why she’s here with
me? where are the other
guys? how can you be
lucky? having someone the
others have abandoned?
we didn’t have to do it
yet we had to do it.
it was something like
establishing new credibility
with the income tax
man. I get the panties
off. I decide not to
tongue her. even then
I’m thinking about
after it’s over.
we’ll sleep together
tonight
trying to fit ourselves
inside the wallpaper.
I try, fail,
notice the hair on her
head
mostly notice the hair
on her
head
and a glimpse of
nostrils
piglike
I try it
again.
me
women don’t know how to love,
she told me.
you know how to love
but women just want to
leech.
I know this because I’m a
woman.
hahaha, I laughed.
so don’t worry about your breakup
with Susan
because she’ll just leech onto
somebody else.
we talked a while longer
then I said goodbye
hungup
went into the crapper and
took a good beershit
ma
inly thinking, well,
I’m still alive
and have the ability to expell
wastes from my body.
and poems.
and as long as that’s happening
I have the ability to handle
betrayal
loneliness
hangnail
clap
and the economic reports in the
financial section.
with that
I stood up
wiped
flushed
then thought:
it’s true:
I know how to
love.
I pulled up my pants and walked
into the other room.
another bed
another bed
another woman
more curtains
another bathroom
another kitchen
other eyes
other hair
other
feet and toes.
everybody’s looking.
the eternal search.
you stay in bed
she gets dressed for work
and you wonder what happened
to the last one
and the one before that…
it’s all so comfortable—
this love-making
this sleeping together
the gentle kindness…
after she leaves you get up and use her
bathroom,
it’s all so intimate and so strange.
you go back to bed and
sleep another hour.
when you leave it’s with sadness
but you’ll see her again
whether it works or not.
you drive down to the shore and sit
in your car. it’s almost noon.
—another bed, other ears, other
ear rings, other mouths, other slippers, other
dresses
colors, doors, phone numbers.
you were once strong enough to live alone.
for a man nearing sixty you should be more
sensible.
you start the car and shift,
thinking, I’ll phone Jeanie when I get in,
I haven’t seen her since Friday.
trapped
don’t undress my love
you might find a mannequin;
don’t undress the mannequin
you might find
my love.
she’s long ago
forgotten me.
she’s trying on a new
hat
and looks more the
coquette
than ever.
she is a
child
and a mannequin
and
death.
I can’t hate
that.
she didn’t do
anything
unusual.
I only wanted her
to.
tonight
“your poems about the girls will still be around
50 years from now when the girls are gone,”
my editor phones me.
dear editor:
the girls appear to be gone
already.
I know what you mean
but give me one truly alive woman
tonight
walking across the floor toward me
and you can have all the poems
the good ones
the bad ones
or any that I might write
after this one.
I know what you mean.
do you know what I mean?
the escape
escape from the black widow spider
is a miracle as great as art.
what a web she can weave
slowly drawing you to her
she’ll embrace you
then when she’s satisfied
she’ll kill you
still in her embrace
and suck the blood from you.
I escaped my black widow
because she had too many males
in her web
and while she was embracing one
and then the other and then
another
I worked free
got out
to where I was before.
she’ll miss me—
not my love
but the taste of my blood,
but she’s good, she’ll find other
blood;
she’s so good that I almost miss my death,
but not quite;
I’ve escaped. I view the other
webs.
the drill
our marriage book, it
says.
I look through it.
they lasted ten years.
they were young once.
now I sleep in her bed.
he phones her:
“I want my drill back.
have it ready.
I’ll pick the children up at
ten.”
when he arrives he waits outside
the door.
his children leave with
him.
she comes back to bed
and I stretch a leg out
place it against hers.
I was young once too.
human relationships simply aren’t
durable.
I think back to the women in
my life.
they seem non-existent.
“did he get his drill?” I ask.
“yes, he got his drill.”
I wonder if I’ll ever have to come
back for my bermuda
shorts and my record album
by The Academy of St. Martin in the
Fields? I suppose I
will.
texan
she’s from Texas and weighs
103 pounds
and stands before the
mirror combing oceans
of reddish hair
which falls all the way down
her back to her ass.
the hair is magic and shoots
sparks as I lay on the bed
and watch her combing her
hair. she’s like something
out of the movies but she’s
actually here. we make love
at least once a day and
she can make me laugh
any time she cares
to. Texas women are always
healthy, and besides that she’s
cleaned my refrigerator, my sink,
the bathroom, and she cooks and
feeds me healthy foods
and washes the dishes
too.
“Hank,” she told me,
holding up a can of grapefruit
juice, “this is the best of them
all.”
it says: Texas unsweetened
PINK grapefruit juice.
she looks like Katherine Hepburn
looked when she was
in high school, and I watch those
103 pounds
combing a yard and some change
of reddish hair
before the mirror
and I feel her inside of my
wrists and at the backs of my eyes,
and the toes and legs and belly
of me feel her and
the other part too,
and all of Los Angeles falls down
and weeps for joy,
the walls of the love parlors shake—
the ocean rushes in and she turns
to me and says, “damn this hair!”
and I say,
“yes.”
the spider
then there was the time in
New Orleans
I was living with a fat woman,
Marie, in the French Quarter
and I got very sic
k.
while she was at work
I got down on my knees
in the kitchen
that afternoon and
prayed. I was not a
religious man
but it was a very dark afternoon
and I prayed:
“Dear God: if you will let me live,
I promise You I’ll never take
another drink.”
I kneeled there and it was just like
a movie—
as I finished praying
the clouds parted and the sun came
through the curtains
and fell upon me.
then I got up and took a crap.
there was a big spider in Marie’s bathroom
but I crapped anyhow.
an hour later I began feeling much
better. I took a walk around the Quarter
and smiled at people.