Read Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit Page 6

  to meet him

  one night

  we talked a while

  together

  then we left

  Red asked, “what do you

  think?”

  I answered, “more afraid to die

  than the rest of us.”

  I haven’t seen either of them

  since.

  the sandwich

  I walked down the street for a submarine

  sandwich

  and this guy pulled out of the driveway

  of The Institute of Sexual Education

  and almost ran over my toes

  with his bike;

  he had a black dirty beard

  eyes like a Russian pianist

  and the breath of an East Kansas City whore;

  it irritated me to be almost murdered by a

  fool in a sequin jacket;

  I looked upstairs and the girls sat in their chairs

  outside their doors

  dreaming old Greta Garbo movies;

  I put a half a buck into one of the paper racks

  and got the latest sex paper;

  then I went into the sandwich shop

  and ordered the submarine

  and a large coffee.

  they were all sitting in there talking about

  how to lose weight.

  I asked for a sideorder of

  french fries.

  the girls in the sex paper ads

  looked like girls in sex paper ads.

  they told me not to be lonely

  that they could fix me up:

  I could beat them with chains or whips

  or they could beat me

  with chains or whips, whichever way

  I wanted it.

  I finished, paid up, left a tip,

  left the sex paper on the seat.

  then I walked back up Western Avenue

  with my belly hanging out over

  my belt.

  the happy life of the tired

  neatly in tune with

  the song of a fish

  I stand in the kitchen

  halfway to madness

  dreaming of Hemingway’s

  Spain.

  it’s muggy, like they say,

  I can’t breathe,

  have crapped and

  read the sports pages,

  opened the refrigerator

  looked at a piece of purple

  meat,

  tossed it back

  in.

  the place to find the center

  is at the edge

  that pounding in the sky

  is just a water pipe

  vibrating.

  terrible things inch in the

  walls; cancer flowers grow

  on the porch; my white cat has

  one eye torn

  away and there are only 7 days

  of racing left in the

  summer meet.

  the dancer never arrived from the

  Club Normandy

  and Jimmy didn’t bring the

  hooker,

  but there’s a postcard from

  Arkansas

  and a throwaway from Food King:

  10 free vacations to Hawaii,

  all I got to do is

  fill out the form.

  but I don’t want to go to

  Hawaii.

  I want the hooker with the pelican eyes

  brass belly-button

  and

  ivory heart.

  I take out the piece of purple

  meat

  drop it into the

  pan.

  then the phone rings.

  I fall to one knee and roll under the

  table. I remain there

  until it

  stops.

  then I get up and

  turn on the

  radio.

  no wonder Hemingway was a

  drunk, Spain be damned,

  I can’t stand it

  either.

  it’s so

  muggy.

  the proud thin dying

  I see old people on pensions in the

  supermarkets and they are thin and they are

  proud and they are dying

  they are starving on their feet and saying

  nothing. long ago, among other lies,

  they were taught that silence was

  bravery. now, having worked a lifetime,

  inflation has trapped them. they look around

  steal a grape

  chew on it. finally they make a tiny

  purchase, a day’s worth.

  another lie they were taught:

  thou shalt not steal.

  they’d rather starve than steal

  (one grape won’t save them)

  and in tiny rooms

  while reading the market ads

  they’ll starve

  they’ll die without a sound

  pulled out of roominghouses

  by young blond boys with long hair

  who’ll slide them in

  and pull away from the curb, these

  boys

  handsome of eye

  thinking of Vegas and pussy and

  victory.

  it’s the order of things: each one

  gets a taste of honey

  then the knife.

  under

  I can’t pick anything up

  off the floor—

  old socks

  shorts

  shirts

  newspapers

  letters

  spoons bottles beercaps

  can’t make the bed

  hang up the toilet paper

  brush my teeth

  comb my hair

  dress

  I stay on the bed

  naked

  on the soiled sheets

  which are half on the

  floor

  the buttons on the mattress

  press into my

  back

  when the phone rings

  when somebody comes to the door

  I anger

  I’m like a bug under a rock

  with that fear too

  I stay in bed

  notice the mirror on the dresser

  it is a victory to scratch

  myself.

  hot month

  got 3 women coming down in

  July, maybe more

  they want to suck my blood-

  vibes

  do I have enough

  clean towels?

  I told them that I was feeling

  bad

  (I didn’t expect all these

  mothers

  arriving with their tits

  distended)

  you see

  I am too good

  with the drunken letter

  and the drunken phonecall

  screaming for love

  when I probably don’t

  have it

  I am going out to buy more

  towels

  bedsheets

  Alka-Seltzer

  washrags

  mop handles

  mops

  swords

  knives

  bombs

  vaseline flowers of yearning

  the works of

  De Sade.

  maybe tomorrow

  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.

  junk

  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.

  8 rooms

  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 him

  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 killer smiles

  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.

  horse and fist

  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.

  close encounters of another kind

  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.