The Roominghouse Madrigals (19 page)

 

whichever way you turn

there is gauze and the needle,

the back turned to light,

scars like valleys

scars like pits of terror,

and the peach falls to

the dirt.

 

 

the hospitals are the same

most grey like old balloons,

these sidewalks

they are so sweet

leading to the beds

where they shit upon

themselves,

my hands again locked,

sick twigs of limbs,

hurricane here:

minds going out

like lighthouse lamps

 

 

hell hell

so much sick

 

 

and they come up to change

the sheets, 2 mexican girls

without even a sneeze

or pause

and one of them points at

me: “I’ll take this one

and you take that one

and we’ll make them well

and then we’ll

all

shack-up together!”

and they laugh

 

 

and the clean sheet comes

down bringing in the cool

air, and I hear them

walk away laughing

and the trees are filled

with fruit, the sun

brings gophers peeking

from their holes; stones

are these which stick in

shoes, that pounce upon

the hollow head

that cannot bleed or

kiss; I touch the sheets,

I touch the sheets…

 

 

I type at a window that faces the street

on ground level and

if I fall out

the worst that can happen is a dirty shirt

under a tiny banana tree.

 

 

as I type people go by

mostly women

and I sit in my shorts

(sometimes without top)

and going by they

can’t be sure I am not entirely

naked. so

I get these faces

which pretend they don’t see

anything

but I think they do:

they see me as I

sweat over the poem like beating a

hog to death

as the sun begins to fail over

Sunset Blvd.

over the motel sign

where tired people from Arkansas and Iowa

pay too much to sleep while

dreaming of movie stars.

there is a religionist next door

and he plays his radio loud

and it seems to have

very good volume

so I am getting the

message.

and there’s a white cat

chewed-up and neurotic

who calls 2 or 3 times a day

eats and leaves

but just looking at him

lifts the soul a little

like something on strings.

and the same young man from the girlie

magazine phones and we talk

and I get the idea

that we each hang up

mildly thinking each other

somewhat the fool.

 

 

now the woman calls me to dinner.

it’s good to have food.

when you’ve starved

food always remains a

miracle.

the rent is a little higher here

but so far I’ve been able to

pay it

and that’s a miracle too

like still maybe being sane

while thinking of guns and sidewalks

and old ladies in libraries.

there are still

small things to do

like rip this sheet from the typer

go in and eat

stay alive this way.

there are lots of curtains waving here

and now the woman has walked in

she’s rocking back and forth

in the rocker behind me

a bit angry

the food is getting cold and

I’ve got to go

(she doesn’t care that

I’ve got to finish this thing).

it’s just a poor little neighborhood

no place for Art,

whatever that is, and

I hear sprinklers

there’s a shopping basket

a boy on roller skates.

I quit I quit

 

 

for the miracle of food and

maybe nobody ever angry

again, this place and

all the other places.

 

 

I keep putting the empties out back but

the kids smash them against the

wall almost as fast as I can drink them, and

old Mr. Sturgeon died and

they carried him down the stair and

I was in

my underwear; the rats ran after

him leaping with beautiful tails like the

tails of young whores half-drunk on

wine; I kept watching the

signal change outside and

my shoes sitting in the closet and

pretty soon people started coming

in, talking about death and

I watched a billboard advertising beer, and

we turned out all the lights and

it was dark and

somebody lit a cigarette and

we all watched the

flame; it warmed the

room, it put a glow on the walls and

there was a flaring concert of

liquid voices saying the

room is still here, the

drawers are

still here; Mrs. McDonald will

want her rent.

 

 

that’s all they

said.

 

 

soon somebody went out for another bottle and

we were thinking of

something else.

I don’t remember what, but

the

signal kept changing.

 

1

 

rivergut girlriver damn drowned

people going in and out of books and

doors and graves people dressed in pink

getting haircuts and tired and dogs and

Vivaldi

 

2

 

you missed a cat argument the grey was

tired mad flipping tail and he monkied

with the black one who didn’t want to

be bothered and then the black one

chased the grey one pawed it once the

grey one said
yow

ran away stopped scratched its ear

flicked at a straw popped in air and

ran off defeated and planning as a

white one (another one) ran along the

other side of the fence chasing a

grasshopper as somebody shot Mr

Kennedy.

 

3

 

the best way to explain the meaning

of concourse is to forget all about

it or any meaning at all

is

just something that grows or does not

grow lives a while and dies a long time

life is weak, the rope around a man’s

neck is stronger than the man because

it does not suffer it also does not

listen to Brahms but Brahms can get

to be a bore and even insufferable when

you are locked in a cage with

sticks almost forever.

I remember my old

man raged because I did not sweat

when I mowed his lawn twice over

while the lucky guys played football

or jacked-off in the garage, he threw a

2 by 4 at the back of one of my legs

the left one, I have a bloodvessel that

juts out an inch there now and I

picked up the log and threw it into

his beautiful roses and limped around

and finished the lawn not sweating

and 25 years later I buried him. it

cost me a grand: he was stronger

than I was.

 

4

 

I see the river now I see

the river now grassfish

limping through milkblue

she is taking off her stockings

she is beginning to cry.

my car needs 2 new

front tires.

 

 

Winter comes in a lot of places in August,

like the railroad yards

when we come over the bridge,

hundreds of us,

workers, like cattle,

like Hannibal victorious over the Mountain;

Winter comes in Rome, Winter comes in Paris

and Miami

and we come

over the silver bridge,

carrying our olive lunch pails

with the good fat wives’ coffee

and 2 bologna sandwiches

and oh, just a
tid-bit
found
somewhere

to warm our gross man-bones

and prove to us that love

is not clipped out like a coupon;

…here we come,

hundreds of us,

blank-faced and rough

(we
can
take it, god damn it!)

over our silver bridge,

smoking our cheap cigars in the grapefruit air;

here we come,

bulls stamping in cheap cotton,

bad boys all;

ah hell, we’d rather play the ponies

or chance a sunburn at the shore,

but we’re men,
god damn it
, men,

can’t you see?

men,

coming over our bridge,

taking our Rome and our coffee,

bitter, brave and

numb.

 

 

folding away my tools with the dead parts of

my soul

I go to night school, study Art;

my teacher is a homosexual who teaches us to

make shadows with

a 2b pencil (there are five laws of light, and it

has only been

known for the last 400 years

that shadows have a core);

there are color wheels,

there are scales

and there are many deep and futile rules

that must never be broken;

 

 

all about me sit half-talents, and suddenly—

I know

that there is nothing more incomplete than a

half-talent;

a man should either be a genius

or nothing at all;

 

 

I would like to tell that homosexual

(though I never will)

that people who dabble in the Arts

are misfits in a misshapen society;

the superior man of today is the man

of limited feeling

whose education consists of

ready-made actions and reactions to

ready-made situations;

 

 

but he is more interested in men than ideas,

and if I told him that a society which takes

its haircuts from characters in comic strips

needs more than heavenly guidance,

he would say

with sweeping and powerful irrelevance

that I was a bitter man;

 

 

so we sit and piddle with charcoal

and talk about Picasso

and make collages; we are getting ready

to do nothing unusual

and I alone am angry

as I think about the sun clanging against the earth

and all the bodies moving

but ours;

 

 

I would bring down the world’s stockpile of drowned

and mutilated days!

I would bring down the beams of sick warehouses

I have counted

with each year’s life!

I want trumpets and crowing,

I want a red-palmed Beethoven rising from the grave,

I want the whir and tang of a simple living orange

in a simple living tree;

 

 

I want you to draw like Mondrian, he says;

but I don’t want to draw

like Mondrian,

I want to draw like a sparrow eaten by a cat.