The Roominghouse Madrigals (12 page)

 

here they come

grey and beastly

rubbing out the night

with their bloodred torches,

Numbo! they scream,

Hail Numbo!

and grocer John gets down

on the floor and hugs

his precious eggs

and sausage,

and the bats of

Babe Ruth get up and

strut their

averages

around a dark bar,

and the grey blonde in bed

with me asks

“what’s all the noise?”

and I say,

“the world is coming

to an end.”

and we sit in the window

and watch, strangely

happy. we have 14 cigarettes

and a bottle of wine.

enough to last

until they

find us.

 

 

a farewell thing while breathing

was walking down the hall

in underwear

with painted face like clown

a bomb from Cologne in right pocket

a
Season in Hell

in the left,

stripes of sunset

like

bass

running

down

his

arms,

and they found him in the morning

dangling in the fire escape

window,

face frosted and gone as an electric bulb,

and the sparrows

were in the brush downstairs,

and

friend,

sparrows do not sing

and they

(the people, not the sparrows)

carried him down the steps

like a wasted owl.

 

 

daily the

sledgehammers and the

sad-eyed mules of men, &

there was Christ hung like

dried bacon, and now

the con-men raking it in:

the young girls

the mansions

the trips to

Paris, and look:

even the great artists

the great writers

raking it in.

but where do we go

while the great writers are

saving their own

souls?

where do we go?

…to hell, of course, juggling their

collected works

under our

collective

arms.

 

 

this

is what happens when the

drink and the life

catch up with what is left of

one.

I still hope to send you the

paperback although it is all

swollen.

 

 

I read

most of it in the bathroom where the

faucets drip hot water and make

steam

and that is what happened to the pages and

the binding is about to

pop

but I still thought I’d mail it to

you but

something always interferes—

 

 

there is a mirror

here and

I see myself in the mirror

and I stagger like a deer taking a

slug in the neck

 

 

the face is not what it should

be and I tell myself that it does not

matter

that I

am tired of factual and recognized

good

that we need new goodness new

truth for

ourselves and

let the others wear that

out.

 

 

but anyhow

I still hope to mail you the

paperback

I am sure I will mail it to you

sometime I think I will

just walk into the room and brush by

knock it to the floor with my

hand and pick it up

without looking at anything

and I will find an envelope and

mail it to

you.

 

 

I want to get it out

of here.

 

 

all up and down the street they came back

without arms or legs or eyes or

lungs or minds or

lives, although

the war had been

won

and the madam stood in the doorway

and told me,

it won’t matter, it’ll be

business as

usual

because if they haven’t shot off

the other parts

they’ll still want to

fuck.

 

 

and the dead? I

asked.

 

 

the dead are without money or

sense.

 

 

many of the living are the same

way? I suggested.

 

 

yeah, but those we don’t

serve.

 

 

God will love

you.

 

 

I’m sure He

will.

will you serve

Him?

 

 

I have been serving Him, you know

that: men are men and

soldiers are soldiers and

they love to

fuck, don’t

you?

 

 

amen, I

said.

 

 

ants crawl upon paper flowers with all the insect color

of my hatred and

I crash out the lamp and rise to scream,

but, lo, I am greater than garlic and faster

than the foreigner Errico!

 

 

in the cupboard sits my bottle

like a dwarf waiting to scratch out my prayers.

I drink and cough like some idiot at a symphony,

sunlight and maddened birds are everywhere,

the phone rings gamboling its sound

against the odds of the crooked sea;

I drink deeply and evenly now,

I drink to paradise

and death

and the lie of love.

 

 

at the window I watch the soldiers parachute down

as my radio plays the
Symphonie Fantastique
by

Berlioz;

the lightning stills the ants, stiffens them with

the fear of man, and there is a knock upon my door.

I walk with my luger and turn the knob. everything

is nonsense, nothing matters. the flies are upon

the sugar, wildly in the small richness: they have

my blithe and tinkered soul…

 

 

THE MARCH TO THE GALLOWS!

 

 

I laugh gaily as the chandeliers swing

and the last of the lovers

clutch at the straws of their lives,

and I fire through the doorway

as the music sinks to a lisp at the dismay

and derangement

of Birth.

 

 

a woman walks by and I look at her and know that her
existence is

depleted of thought and worms

that she does not realize that successful men can be such

beasts

that she does not know that I have fallen into the sloth of

formula

 

 

I watch her as I sit in a dirty kitchen on a dirty

afternoon

she walks dreaming of oranges and

Cadillacs

 

 

mentally I throw her up into a palm

tree

physically I rape her

spiritually I spit in her

eye

 

 

I realize that really she is no more say than

some words written by a small boy in a public

crapper

 

 

these innumerable and astounding

realizations

this dirty

life

 

 

her skin is white and sagging

she has on a purple

underslip

 

 

this is what causes

wars

great paintings

suicides

harps

geognosy and

hermits.

 

 

there is nothing subtle about dying or

dumping garbage, or the spider

and this fist full of nickels and

the barking of dogs tonight

when the beast puffs on beer

and moonlight,

and asks my name

and I hold to the wall

not man enough to cry

as the city dumps its sorrow

in wine bottles and stale kisses,

and the handcuffs and crutches and slabs

fornicate like mad.

 

 

if it’s raining and you’re sitting behind a shade with

a cup of curari or a dead

antelope

with bluer eyes than any of the beautiful blue eyes

of any of the girls in this ugly

town

I’ll paint your fence green or

unplug your drain for almost

nothing;

if the fog comes in like soft cleanser

and you can see old men looking out at it

from behind curtains

these warm old men smoking pipes

I will tell you stories to make your dreams

easier;

but if you mutilate me

hang me alongside the scarecrow like a

cheap Christ

and let some schoolboy hang a sign about my

throat

I’m going to walk your streets of night

with a knife

in the rain in the snow

on gay holidays I’ll be there

behind you

and when I decide finally that we will

meet

you will not understand

because you did not want

to

and the flowers and the dogs and the

cities and the children will not

miss you.

 

 

the most binding labor

is

trying to make it

under a sanctified

banner.

similarity of intention

with others

marks the fool from the

explorer

 

 

you can learn this at

any

poolhall, racetrack, bar

university or

jail.

 

 

people run from rain but

sit

in bathtubs full of

water.

 

 

it is fairly dismal to know that

millions of people are worried about

the hydrogen bomb

yet

they are already

dead.

 

 

yet they keep trying to make

women

money

sense.

 

 

and finally the Great Bartender will lean forward

white and pure and strong and mystic

to tell you that you’ve had

enough

just when you feel like

you’re getting

started.