Mockingbird Wish Me Luck (9 page)

poetaster and counter of tombstones feeling the blade against my

whimpering brain i i was more agile…and so psycho and public

enemy number one pinched out the souls of bedbugs while the world

grabbed its balls in more agony: ww 2

and we forgot in our small dying to acknowledge the small nobility

of whatever it was

BUTTT as i wuz saying

just as we were beginning to

 

enjoy our bedbugs they rushed us out of the cell

5 or 6 days after

 

the original complaint to fumigate

and they put me in with a polack

 

or something

old old old

 

he tore up my bedsheet the first time

 

i went to exercise yard to make a clothesline out of it

and i have a very sensitive skin despite my poker face

 

and the wool blankets only those who can’t stand rough wool will

know what i mean and so i told the old man

he was always on the crapper

 

puffiing on an empty pipe and all these makeshift makeshit

clotheslines hanging about dripping polack stockings and rags

(forget my name i am a Prussian nobleman) (this is fiction)

 

(isn’t it) (i am getting a little bored with this and could use a

hot piece of ass as what man cd not?)

he wuz always on the crapper

 

puffing and saying

TARA BUBU EAT TARA BUBU SHEET

TARA BUBU EAT TARA BUBU SHEET

over and over

then he’d laugh

 

he was telling me the facts of life but all i could feel

as the bluebirds were driven away from the white cliffs of dover

was that wool blanket against me all and everywhere

 

LISTEN YOU OLD FUCK i told him I’VE KILLED TWO

 

MEN ALREADY AND I’D JUST AS SOON KILL U AS SCRATCH

MY ASS !!!

 

and the old idiot just laughed at me and for a moment i saw it

 

it was possible why not my hands about that wrinkled morgue of

flesh hoo says u can’t kill what’s already dead the eyes pop out

the tongue the lungs reach for air like kittens chasing a roll of

yarn but it was too ugly i don’t think what got Dos in

Crime and Punishment
was that a single man could not judge what to

eradicate but that he COULD and KNEW IT and it was easier to turn

it over to God because you would finally have to eradicate

everything including self (though u usually began with self and

by eradicating self you eradicated the rest) and that would make God

a failure and that would not do because if you eliminate God

you have to come down to self and Self built in 20 or 30 or 60 years

cannot match a 2000 year backlog of root and tradition and so Dos

did the wise thing in admitting that he could be wrong although he

felt right and i let the old man shit and spew tara bubu and slept

in wool blankets

 

they broke up the crap game from the tower

the screw pointed his m.g. down

 

the guy with the dice was taking too big a chunk from

each pot and the losers were getting hot I guess i should have

said it to the old man that way but one guy said to the furnisher

of dice DON’T PUT YOUR HAND IN THERE AGAIN UNTIL I TELL

U TO

and that was that until the screw got busy pointed his

 

steel nose

 

they came back for me and put me in some kind of room

 

they were making out a report

they asked me how to spell some words

 

like Andernach and so forth

i had a long red beard by then

 

and they asked me why

and i said

have you ever had the end cell where they

 

pass out one razorblade at the first cell and that same razor blade is

used by the last man in the last cell, and have you ever celled with an

old man whose only joy in life is eating and shitting and shaving and

wd u take 1/3 of his joy by taking the blade and shaving FIRST?

besides i use this red beard to fight the wool blankets with

 

i believe the kid is psycho one of them said

 

anyhow 3 or 4 days later

they let me out

 

only first i had to go through another physical for the army

but once again

i couldn’t get past the sike

 

and that same day

when they let me out

even before i tried to get

 

a room i lay down in that park outside the philly library

i got on

 

my back and i felt little grass bugs crawling upon me and i let them

crawl they were beautifully clean

and i let the clouds come down

 

into my head but the sky was a bad color it hurt my eyes it was all

not good i began to fill up with sadness

and i heard some girls come by

 

talking and laughing and one of them tripped over my ankle

and she said OOOh OOOH and then laughed

and i glared

 

up at them outa my red wool beard and one of them said

OOOOOH I WANT HIM !!!

and then i fell back and went back to the clouds

until later

 

clambering up out of the misery of the tomb

i sat upon a park bench watching traffic go by

and then it came a long caravan of trucks

filled with good young soldiers who only wanted to live

and i was young and watching and for a moment i loved them the crowd

but once again they turned on me and from the first truck

came a hissing and a cursing and then a booing a racket of vile hate

they wanted me with them and the whole avenue filled with hot sound

and more trucks came by slowly and it was an opera it was an

opera of condemnation, but i had not wanted war never will and

the gods the gods the dice had been good and i waved an arm

and smiled somebody screamed YOU BASTARD GET OFF YOUR

DEAD ASS !

but i did not i watched them go where they were going

 

i imagine the one who fainted he was in there too

we were all

 

very young i was young they were young

but i imagine

 

war being swine mob being swine

i was not as young as they

 

I used to be a great

traveler, even without

money. some cities I’d say in 2

weeks, some 3 days…for years I went through the

cities, sometimes coming up against the same one

2 or 3 times.

now I’m here…not only the same city…

the same apartment…for ten years…

ten years…

the last person in here before me was

crazy, they carried her off

screaming

in a big white

sheet, and I moved

in.

it’s all right…there have been various

jobs, various women, various

ways…

one bungles through, it seems…

but it’s the ants here,

the ants here are crazy, they keep building nests

in the bathtub drain…in the water basin

drain…

it’s delicious and sanitary and ugly:

I turn on the hot water tap

and watch them go spinning to a

burning drowning hell…

it’s neat…

but they keep coming back…

more and more ants…

the ants come back faster than the women.

today I was about to do in a new

batch, both tub and water basin,

the phone rang,

it was my friend Danny. he said,

listen, you are the only real man I know. I’m

going to kill myself…

go, I said, ahead…

she left me, he said, she left me like that,

hardly any notice…I really loved

her. (he began to cry.)

listen, I said, meeting a bitch is an accident,

having one leave you is a basic reality,

be glad you’re coming up against

basic reality…

thanks, he said (sobbing), and hung

up.

I went back to the ants and turned on both water

taps at

once.

 

 

I burned and drowned them good.

 

 

Then the phone rang,

listen, he said, I’m going to do it,

I’m really going to do it.

 

 

I hung up.

 

 

sitting here

typing

at a friend’s house

I find a black book by the typer:

Jeffers’:
Be Angry at the Sun
.

I think of Jeffers often,

of his rocks and his hawks and his

isolation.

Jeffers was a real loner.

yes, he had to write.

I try to think of loners who don’t break out

at all

in any fashion,

and I think, no, that’s not strong,

somehow, that’s dead.

Jeffers was alive and a loner and

he made his statements.

his rocks and his hawks and his isolation

counted.

he wrote in lonely blood

a man trapped in a corner

but what a corner

fighting down to the last mark

 

 

“I’ve built my rock,” he sent the message to

the lovely girl who came to his door,

“you go build yours.”

this was the same girl who had screwed Ezra,

and she wrote me that Jeffers sent her away

like that.

BE ANGRY AT THE SUN.

Jeffers was a rock who was not dead.

his book sits to my left now as I type.

I think of all his people crashing down

hanging themselves, shooting themselves,

taking poisons…

locked away against an unbearable humanity.

Jeffers was like his people:

he demanded perfection and beauty

and it was not there

in human form. he found it in non-human

forms. I’ve run out of non-human forms,

I’m angry at Jeffers. no,

I’m not. and if the girl comes to my door

I’ll send her away too. after all,

who wants to follow old

Ez?