Love is a Dog from Hell (15 page)

 

I never wear dark shades

but this red head went to get

a prescription filled on Hollywood Blvd.

and she kept haggling and working at

me, snapping and snarling.

I left her at the prescription counter

and walked around and got a large tube of

Crest and a giant bottle of Joy.

then I walked up to

the dark shade display rack and bought

the most vicious pair of shades

I could find.

we paid for our things

walked down to a Mexican place

and she ordered a taco she couldn’t eat

and sat there

haggling and snapping and snarling at me

and after eating I ordered 3 beers

drank them down

then put on my shades.

“o my God,” she said, “o my God shit!”

and I ripped her up both sides

most excellent riposte

snarling stinking marmalade shots

shit blows

farts from hell,

then I got up

paid

she following me out

both of us in shades

and the sidewalks split.

we found her car

got in and drove off

me sitting there

pushing the shades back against my nose

ripping out her backbone

and waving it out the window

like a broken Confederate flagpole…

dark and vicious shades help.

“o my God shit!” she said,

and the sun was up

 

and I didn’t know it.

they were a bargain for $4.25

even though I had left the Crest

and the Joy behind

at the taco place.

 

by God, I don’t know what to

do.

they’re so nice to have around.

they have a way of playing with

the balls

and looking at the cock very

seriously

turning it

tweeking it

examining each part

as their long hair falls on

your belly.

 

it’s not the fucking and sucking

alone that reaches into a man

and softens him, it’s the extras,

it’s all the extras.

 

now it’s raining tonight

and there’s nobody

they are elsewhere

examining things

in new bedrooms

in new moods

or maybe in old

bedrooms.

 

anyhow, it’s raining tonight,

one hell of a dashing, pouring

rain….

 

very little to do.

I’ve read the newspaper

paid the gas bill

the electric co.

the phone bill.

it keeps raining.

 

they soften a man

and then let him swim

in his own juice.

 

I need an old-fashioned whore

at the door tonight

closing her green umbrella,

drops of moonlit rain on her

purse, saying, “shit, man,

can’t you get better music

than
that
on your radio?

and turn up the heat…”

 

it’s always when a man’s swollen

with love and everything

else

that it keeps raining

splattering

flooding

rain

good for the trees and the

grass and the air…

good for things that

live alone.

 

I would give anything

for a female’s hand on me

tonight.

they soften a man and

then leave him

listening to the rain.

 

the history of melancholia

includes all of us.

 

me, I writhe in dirty sheets

while staring at blue walls

and nothing.

 

I have gotten so used to melancholia

that

I greet it like an old

friend.

 

I will now do 15 minutes of grieving

for the lost redhead,

I tell the gods.

 

I do it and feel quite bad

quite sad,

then I rise

CLEANSED

even though nothing is

solved.

 

that’s what I get for kicking

religion in the ass.

 

I should have kicked the redhead

in the ass

where her brains and her bread and

butter are

at…

 

but, no, I’ve felt sad

about everything:

the lost redhead was just another

smash in a lifelong

loss…

 

I listen to drums on the radio now

and grin.

 

there is something wrong with me

besides

melancholia.

 

my doctor has just come into his office

from surgery.

he meets me in the men’s john.

“God damn,” he says to me,

“where did you find her? oh, I just like

to
look
at girls like that!”

I tell him: “it’s my specialty: cement

hearts and beautiful bodies. If you can find

a heart-beat, let me know.”

“I’ll take good care of her,” he says.

“yes, and please remember all the ethical

codes of your honorable profession,” I tell

him.

 

he zips up first then washes.

“how’s your health?” he asks.

 

“physically I’m sound as a tic. mentally I’m

wasted, doomed, on my tiny cross, all that

crap.”

 

“I’ll take good care of her.”

 

“yes. and let me know about the heart-beat.”

 

he walks out.

I finish, zip up and also walk out.

only I don’t wash up.

 

I’m far beyond all that.

 

I’ve come by, she says, to tell you

that this is it. I’m not kidding, it’s

over. this is it.

 

I sit on the couch watching her arrange

her long red hair before my bedroom

mirror.

she pulls her hair up and

piles it on top of her head—

she lets her eyes look at

my eyes—

then she drops the hair and

lets it fall down in front of her face.

 

we go to bed and I hold her

speechlessly from the back

my arm around her neck

I touch her wrists and hands

feel up to

her elbows

no further.

 

she gets up.

 

this is it, she says,

eat your heart out. You

got any rubber bands?

 

I don’t know.

 

here’s one, she says,

this will do. well,

I’m going.

 

I get up and walk her

to the door

just as she leaves

she says,

I want you to buy me

some high-heeled shoes

with tall thin spikes,

black high-heeled shoes.

no, I want them

red.

 

I watch her walk down the cement walk

under the trees

she walks all right and

as the poinsettas drip in the sun

I close the door.

 

this time has finished me.

 

I feel like the German troops

whipped by snow and the communists

walking bent

with newspapers stuffed into

worn boots.

 

my plight is just as terrible.

maybe more so.

 

victory was so close

victory was there.

 

as she stood before my mirror

younger and more beautiful than

any woman I had ever known

combing yards and yards of red hair

as I watched her.

 

and when she came to bed

she was more beautiful than ever

and the love was very very good.

 

eleven months.

 

now she’s gone

gone as they go.

 

this time has finished me.

 

it’s a long road back

and back to where?

 

the guy ahead of me

falls.

 

I step over him.

 

did she get him too?

 

I reached up into the top of the closet

and took out a pair of blue panties

and showed them to her and

asked “are these yours?”

 

and she looked and said,

“no, those belong to a dog.”

 

she left after that and I haven’t seen

her since. she’s not at her place.

I keep going there, leaving notes stuck

into the door. I go back and the notes

are still there. I take the Maltese cross

cut it down from my car mirror, tie it

to her doorknob with a shoelace, leave

a book of poems.

when I go back the next night everything

is still there.

 

I keep searching the streets for that

blood-wine battleship she drives

with a weak battery, and the doors

hanging from broken hinges.

 

I drive around the streets

an inch away from weeping,

ashamed of my sentimentality and

possible love.

 

a confused old man driving in the rain

wondering where the good luck

went.