The Last Night of the Earth Poems (15 page)

 

the doctor is into collecting art

and the magazines in his waiting room

are Artsy

have thick covers, glistening pages,

and large color

photos.

 

the receptionist calls my name and

I’m led into a waiting room with

walls adorned with paintings

and a chart of the human

body.

 

the doctor enters: “how are you

doing?”

 

not well, I think, or I wouldn’t

be here.

 

“now,” he goes on, “I am surprised

by the biopsy, I didn’t expect

this…”

 

the doctor is a bald, well-scrubbed

pink fellow.

 

“I can almost always tell just by

looking; this time, I

missed…”

 

he paused.

 

“go on,” I say.

 

“all right, let’s say there are

4 types of cancer—A, B, C, D.

well, you’ve got

D.

and if I had cancer I’d rather

have your kind:

D.”

 

the doctor is in a tough business

but the pay is

good.

 

“well,” he says, “we’ll just burn it off,

o.k.?”

 

I stretch out on the table and he has an

instrument, I can feel the heat of it

searing through the air

but also

I hear a whirring sound

like a drill.

 

“it’ll be over in a

blink…”

 

the small growth is just inside of

the right nostril.

the instrument touches it

and

the room is filled with the smell

of burning flesh.

 

then he stops.

 

then he starts

again.

 

there is pain but it’s sharp and

centered.

 

he stops

again.

“now we are going to do it

once more to

clean it

up.”

 

he applies the instrument

again.

this time I feel the most

pain.

 

“there now…”

 

it’s finished, no bandage needed,

it’s

cauterized.

 

then I’m at the receptionist’s

desk, she makes out a bill, I

pay with my

Mastercard, am out the door,

down the stairway and there

in the parking lot

awaits

my faithful automobile.

 

It’s a day with a great deal of

afternoon left

 

I light a cigarette, start the

car and

get the hell

out of there

moving toward something

else.

 

in the bottom of the hour

lurks

the smoking claw

the red train

the letter home

the deep-fried blues.

 

in the bottom of the hour

lurks

the song you sang together

the mouse in the attic

the train window in the rain

the whiskey breath on grandfather

the coolness of the jail trustee.

 

in the bottom of the hour

lurks

the famous gone quite stupid

churches with peeling white paint

lovers who chose hyenas

schoolgirls giggling at atrophy

the suicide oceans of night.

 

in the bottom of the hour

lurks

button eyes in a cardboard face

dead library books squeezed upright.

in the bottom of the hour

lurks

the octopus

Gloria gone mad while shaving her armpits

the gang wars

no toilet paper at all in a train station restroom

a flat tire halfway to Vegas.

in the bottom of the hour

lurks

the dream of the barmaid as the perfect girl

the first and only home run

the father sitting in the bathroom with the door open

the brave and quick death

the gang rape in the Fun House.

 

in the bottom of the hour

lurks

the wasp in the spider web

the plumbers moving to Malibu

the death of the mother like a bell that never rang

the absence of wise old men.

 

in the bottom of the hour

lurks

Mozart

fast food joints where the price of a bad meal exceeds the hourly wage

angry women and deluded men and faded children

the housecat

love as a swordfish.

 

in the bottom of the hour

lurks

17,000 people screaming at a homerun

millions laughing at the obvious jokes of a tv comedian

the long and hideous wait in the welfare offices

Cleopatra fat and insane

Beethoven in the grave.

in the bottom of the hour

lurks

the damnation of Faust and sexual intercourse

the sad-eyed dogs of summer lost in the streets

the last funeral

Celine failing again

the carnation in the buttonhole of the kindly killer.

in the bottom of the hour

lurks

fantasies tainted with milk

our obnoxious invasion of the planets

Chatterton drinking rat poison

the bull that should have killed Hemingway

Paris like a pimple in the sky.

 

in the bottom of the hour

lurks

the mad writer in a cork room

the falseness of the Senior Prom

the submarine with purple footprints.

 

in the bottom of the hour

lurks

the tree that cries in the night

the place that nobody found

being so young you thought you could change it

being middle-aged and thinking you could survive it

being old and thinking you could hide from it.

 

in the bottom of the hour

lurks

2:30 a.m.

and the next to last line

and then the last.

 

for the broken egg on the floor

for the 5th of July

for the fish in the tank

for the old man in room 9

for the cat on the fence

 

for yourself

 

not for fame

not for money

 

you’ve got to keep chopping

 

as you get older

the glamour recedes

 

it’s easier when you’re young

 

anybody can rise to the

heights now and then

 

the buzzword is

consistency

 

anything that keeps it

going

 

this life dancing in front of

Mrs. Death.

 

the uselessness of the word is

evident.

I would like to make

this

piece of paper

shriek and dance and

laugh

but

the keys just

strike it harmlessly

and

we settle

for just a fraction of

the whole.

 

this incompleteness is all

we have:

we write the same things

over and over

again.

we are fools,

driven.

 

the uselessness of the word is

evident.

 

writers can only pretend to

succeed

some pretend well, others

not so

 

yet

none of us come

near

none of us even

close

sitting at these

machines

 

behooved to

live

out

our indecent

profession.

 

I am not alone.

he’s here now.

sometimes I think he’s

gone

then he

flies back

in the morning or at

noon or in the

night.

a bird no one wants.

he’s mine.

my bird of pain.

he doesn’t sing.

that bird

swaying on the

bough.

 

that as the yellow shade rips

as the cat leaps wild-eyed

as the old bartender leans on the wood

as the hummingbird sleeps

 

you know and I know and thee know

 

as the tanks practice on false battlefields

as your tires work the freeway

as the midget drunk on cheap bourbon cries alone at night

as the bulls are carefully bred for the matadors

as the grass watches you and the trees watch you

as the sea holds creatures vast and true

 

you know and I know and thee know

 

the sadness and the glory of two slippers under a bed

the ballet of your heart dancing with your blood

young girls of love who will someday hate their mirrors

overtime in hell

lunch with sick salad

 

you know and I know and thee know

 

the end as we know it now

it seems such a lousy trick after the lousy agony but

 

you know and I know and thee know

 

the joy that sometimes comes along out of nowhere

rising like a falcon moon across the impossibility

 

you know and I know and thee know

 

the cross-eyed craziness of total elation

we know that we finally have not been cheated

you know and I know and thee know

 

as we look at our hands our feet our lives our way

the sleeping hummingbird

the murdered dead of armies

the sun that eats you as you face it

 

you know and I know and thee know

 

we will defeat death.