The Last Night of the Earth Poems (25 page)

 

a great mind and a good body seldom go

together.

or a great body and a good

mind.

or a great body and a great

mind.

 

but worse, a not so good mind and a

not so good body often go

together.

 

in fact, that’s almost the entire

populace.

and all these

reproducing more of

themselves.

 

is there any wonder why the world

is where it’s at

now?

 

just notice the creature sitting near you

in a movie house

or standing ahead of you in a

supermarket line.

or giving a State of the Union

Address.

 

that the gods have let us go on

this long

this badly.

 

as the snail comes crawling home

to manna.

 

what I liked about e. e. cummings

was that he cut away from

the holiness of the

word

and with charm

and gamble

gave us lines

that sliced through the

dung.

 

how it was needed!

how we were withering

away

in the old

tired

manner.

 

of course, then came all

the

e. e. cummings

copyists.

they copied him then

as the others had

copied Keats, Shelley,

Swinburne, Byron, et

al.

 

but there was only

one

e. e. cummings.

of course.

 

one sun.

 

one moon.

one poet,

like

that.

 

I’ve probably had about more of them

than any person alive

and they haven’t killed me

yet

but some of those mornings felt

awfully near

death.

 

as you know, the worst drinking is done

on an empty stomach, while smoking

heavily and downing many different

types of

libations.

 

and the worst hangovers are when you

awaken in your car or in a strange room

or in an alley or in jail.

 

the worst hangovers are when you

awaken to realize that you have done

something absolutely vile, ignorant and

possibly dangerous the night before

but

you can’t quite remember what it

was.

 

and you awaken in various states of

disorder—parts of your body

damaged, your money missing

and/or possibly and often your

car, if you had one.

 

you might place a telephone call to

a lady, if you were with one, most

often to have her slam the phone

down on you.

or, if she is next to you then,

to feel her bristling and outrageous

anger.

 

drunks are never forgiven.

 

but drunks will forgive themselves

because they need to drink

again.

 

it takes an ungodly durability to

be a drinking person for many

decades.

 

your drinking companions are

killed by it.

you yourself are in and out of

hospitals

where the warning often is:

“One more drink will kill

you.”

but

you beat that

by taking more than one more

drink.

 

and as you near three quarters of

a century in age

you find that it takes more and more

booze to get you

drunk.

 

and the hangovers are worse,

the recovery stage is

longer.

 

and the most remarkably stupid

thing is

that you are not unpleased that

you have done it

all

and that you are still

doing it.

 

I am typing this now

under the yoke of one of my

worst hangovers

while downstairs now

sit various and sundry

bottles of

alcohol.

 

it’s all been so beastly

lovely,

this mad river,

this gouging

plundering

madness

that I would wish upon

nobody

but myself,

amen.

 

the tragedy-sniffers are all

about.

they get up in the morning

and begin to find things

wrong

and they fling themselves

into a rage about

it,

a rage that lasts until

bedtime,

where even there

they twist in their

insomnia,

not able to rid their

minds

of the petty obstacles

they have

encountered.

 

they feel set against,

it’s a plot.

and by being constantly

angry they feel that

they are constantly

right.

 

you see them in traffic

honking wildly

at the slightest

infraction,

cursing,

spewing their

invectives.

 

you feel them

in lines

at banks

at supermarkets

at movies,

they are pressing

at your back

walking on your

heels,

they are impatient to

a fury.

 

they are everywhere

and into

everything,

these violently

unhappy

souls.

 

actually they are

frightened,

never wanting to be

wrong

they lash out

incessantly…

it is a malady

an illness of

that

breed.

 

the first one

I saw like that

was my

father

 

and since then

I have seen a

thousand

fathers,

ten thousand

fathers

wasting their lives

in hatred,

tossing their lives

into the

cesspool

and

ranting

on.

 

war, war, war,

the yellow monster,

the eater of mind

and body.

war,

the indescribable,

the pleasure of

the mad,

the final argument

of

ungrown men.

 

does it belong?

 

do we?

 

as we approach

the last flash of

our chance.

 

one flower left.

 

one second.

 

breathing like this.

 

I believe the thought came to me

when I was about eleven years

old:

I’ll become an idiot.

 

I had noticed some in the neighborhood,

those who the people called

“idiots.”

 

although looked down upon,

the idiots seemed to have the

more peaceful lives:

nothing was expected of

them.

 

I imagined myself standing upon

streetcorners, hands in pockets,

and drooling a bit at the

mouth.

 

nobody would bother

me.

 

I began to put my plan into

effect.

 

I was first noticed in the

school yards.

my mates jibed at me,

taunted me.

 

even my father noticed:

“you act like a god damned

idiot!”

one of my teachers noticed,

Mrs. Gredis of the long silken

legs.

 

she kept me after

class.

 

“what is it, Henry?

you can tell me…”

 

she put her arms

about me

and I rested myself

against

her.

 

“tell me, Henry, don’t

be afraid…”

 

I didn’t say

anything.

 

“you can stay here

as long as you

want, Henry.

you don’t have to

talk…”

 

she kissed me on the

forehead

and I reached down

and lightly touched

one of her silken

legs.

 

Mrs. Gredis was a

hot number.

 

she kept me after

school almost every

day.

and everybody hated

me

but I believe that I

had the most wonderful

hard-ons

of any eleven year old

boy

in the city of

Los Angeles

 

the people survive to come up with flat fists full

of nothing.

I remember Carl Sandburg’s poem, “The

People, Yes.”

nice thought but completely inaccurate:

the people did not survive through a noble

strength but through lie, compromise and

guile.

I lived with these people, I am not so sure

what people Sandburg lived

with.

but his poem always pissed me off.

it was a poem that lied.

it is “The People, No.”

then and now.

and it doesn’t take a misanthrope to

say this.

 

let us hope that future famous poems

such as Mr. Sandburg’s

make more

sense.