The Roominghouse Madrigals (15 page)

 

I am stuck with a snarl,

by God,

that would walk up the side

of a house;

I snarl, kissing maidens,

50-year-old whores

and torn-up mutuel

tickets;

all affected, I think,

as the motorcycle cop

writes out his ticket

and I think of myself

killing him,

laying him in the sunlight

badge upwards

for butterflies

and stares;

I snarl when I shit

or read the

stock market quotations;

I snarl when it rains,

I am almost depraved,

seldom laugh,

misunderstand flat tires

and various things

such as

human decay of mind and

body, spiders at

work,

all the dead troops of

forever,

toy crosses for sale

in stationery store

windows,

elephants for sale

or thirsty,

riot for useless

causes; stuck elevators,

constipation,

I understand nothing

except maybe

falling off a couch

drunk;

ariel ariel by God,

the clown’s tin sides

thumping,

I bring the cigarette

close,

light it,

not setting my hair

on fire

(I guess this is

important);

I snarl a bit

in case there is Anybody

on the stairway,

on the roof,

on the mountain,

pissing from the tower of

Pisa (which must be

leaned back a bit

for ten million dollars)

and looking.

 

 

I know very little

and while I have eyes inside my head,

and feet to walk with, and

there are universities and

books full of men and

places like

Rome and Madrid—

I stay in bed

and watch the light rise in the curtains

and listen to the sounds

that I dislike, and

I fear the angry wife

the landlord

the psychiatrist

the police

the priest,

yet in bed here

the sun of myself working around my

bones

I am real enough

while

thinking of the factory workers with

sweating crotches

I know enough

of Los Angeles

in this room

so that there is nothing to

prove

and I raise the covers

to the ears of my empty head

and breathe in and out

in and out

within these walls

the beautiful cardboard day of

the mole.

 

 

sterile faces squeezed out from squalid tubes of

bodies ream and blind me to any

compromise.

I would crawl down into the black volcanic gut of a

chicken and

hide hide hide.

listen, I know you think I am bitter and

maybe insane, well

that’s all right

but find me a place:

 

 

a doorman at the casino

where I may separate the drunks from their

florins

or let the air out of the tires of the

mayor

until the years pass by and they

burn the world

until the difference in faces is

indifferent.

or now look

while I’m asking for things

I’d like to tell you

this:

I would like a piece of ass

I have always wanted a piece of ass

most of the

time.

I mean good

stuff not like what

I’ve been

getting.

I want all

silk and garters and flesh and

snake wriggle and the

diamond earrings and the

accent, and the smell of

small cotton

animals.

I don’t ask for a field of flowers in a

coal mine.

I don’t ask you to put eyes in the bats in the

cave.

I don’t ask you to dissolve the bombs like

snow.

I don’t ask pet lions on the front lawn or a

free train ride to

St. Louis.

just a few things.

either that or I’ve got to sell the

piano.

 

 

there’s no color like the color of an orange,

and the mountains were a sad smokey purple like

old curtains in some cheap burlesque house;

 

 

and the small toad sat there

holding the dusty road like a tiny tank,

and staring,

staring like something really definite,

a greener living green than any green leaf;

and it puffed its sides and let them fall

and sometimes through the skin you could see

the dark water of another world;

and then it shot the blood through one eye—

you could see the guts contract

gripped by the glove of the skin—and

the red-thin stream of frogblood

a bright neat trick of centuries

hurled through bright valley air

upon golden nylon;

 

 

she screamed and he laughed, delighted with

the frog’s great victory; she rubbed a quick

pink hanky against the desecrated nylon—

some womanly female in her had been splashed

and unveiled and defeated, and her dress hung

like some loose and second skin as the

indelicate horror writhed in her and claimed away

her fullness;

“you fool!” she spit over the stocking, “it’s

nothing to laugh about!”

 

 

he looked at the toad in the fine rustbrown road

and imagined it smiled at him—

and then it turned half-sideways and hopped left

without haste

and popped again into the air

like some slow-motion nature film,

the legends seeming to grip for notches in the air

and the head humped stiff

and brutalized away from life

like an old man reading a newspaper;

and then, with a backward over-the-shoulder look

it hopped into the grass of home;

 

 

“he’s gone,” he spoke sadly.

he looked to the rocks of the purple mountains

and sensed the frog moving toward them,

done with cities and roads;

he imagined the frog in a stream

his green skin happy against the blue-chill water;

 

 

he took her hand and they moved forward

together

over the unguarded road.

 

 

failures. one after the

other. a whole duckpondfull

of failures. my

right arm hurts way

up into my shoulder.

 

 

it’s like at the track.

you walk up to the bar

your eyes scared out of

your head and

you drink it down:

bar legs asses

walls ceiling

program

horseturds

 

 

and you know you

only have 35 seconds left to live

and all the red mouths

want to kiss you,

all the dresses

want to lift and

show you leg,

it’s like bugles

and symphonies

everywhere

like war

like war

like war

 

 

and the bartender leans

across and says

I hear they’re going to

send in the 6

in the next

race.

 

 

and you say

fuck you,

and he is

a white dishtowel

in your grandmother’s house

which is no longer

there.

 

 

and then he says

something.

 

 

and that’s how

I hurt my

arm.

 

 

regard me in high level of terror

as the one who pulled down the shades

when the president stopped to shave,

enthralled by the way the Indian turned

through darkness and water and sand;

regard me as the one who laughed

when the cat caught fire in the radio

and the owl blew his stinking stack

grabbing mice and bulls and ornaments;

regard me as the one who picked the meat

from the bones and shot craps with God

as the poison coronets floated in the air;

regard me, even as dead, more alive than

many of the living,

and regard me, as I fumble with flat breasts,

regard me as nothing

so we may have peace

and forget.

 

 

to hell with metric—I have read the lore of the ages

and placed them back on their lifeless shelves:

we have written ourselves insensible

while outside…

to hell with poesy—I would rather sit

in cheap burlesque houses

and watch the sick Irish and Jewish clowns

spill their rank wit

into thimble minds.

ah, I know the clouds are quicker than we think

and that we fail at center,

spread outward

like so much ink

and quickly die;

so being a poltroon, I have read the classics,

I have argued in the marketplace,

I have been drunk with the immortals:

I have listened to these children cry

that language is too huge a bone for all of us:

even the finer wits have dulled their massive teeth.

 

 

all the waters are wasted

on Cadillacs and dahlias,

and I am wasted on Milton and matchsticks…

and, tonight, closer to madness than I have ever known,

I watch a small yellow bird

eat gravel at the bottom of his cage.

oh, let me lose my father’s face!

…and find a forest all the axmen execrate,

let me be fuddled in the glade

numb with the growth of fancy;

let me find men and dogs and children,

let me find towers and lattice swaying

in the sun

and a God of Life instead of Death.

when they deal their sticks against my brain

let me see dogs and goats and islands

and clasp my hands beneath their might

(to hell with your bright wit,

with vengeance like a tiger crawls)

and flying, flying

          reach Israel

          the waters

          a stone of blue

          all round in midnight

 

 

ah, I want too much!

bring on your voices, gallant but gall,

chill me with garlic and horns

and yawn me glibly through the

last candle of my hours: I will die

witless and poor.

 

 

words words like steel

like a copper bodice,

like flamingoes

their bloody straw legs

caught under rock;

words as ridiculous

as the equator

as pitiful and clumsy

as some mongrel dog

scratching

working away at an itch

in the skin;

then

there are other tools:

other ways

some shine and some sing

and there are some that spin

and some that kill,

but always,

back to the word:

it will describe your painting

your statue—

 

 

words

to end a fable

that no longer itches

anywhere

 

 

now ridiculous but not clumsy

pitiful

but not wrong.