The Roominghouse Madrigals (4 page)

 

There is enough treachery, hatred,

            violence,

Absurdity in the average human

            being

To supply any given army on any given

      day.

AND The Best At Murder Are Those

      Who Preach Against It.

AND The Best At Hate Are Those

      Who Preach LOVE

AND THE BEST AT WAR

—FINALLY—ARE THOSE WHO

                  PREACH

PEACE

 

 

Those Who Preach GOD

      NEED God

Those Who Preach PEACE

      Do Not Have Peace.

THOSE WHO PREACH LOVE

      DO NOT HAVE LOVE

BEWARE THE PREACHERS

Beware The Knowers.

 

 

Beware

Those Who

Are ALWAYS

READING

BOOKS

 

 

Beware Those Who Either Detest

Poverty Or Are Proud Of It

 

 

BEWARE Those Quick To Praise

For They Need PRAISE In Return

BEWARE Those Quick To Censure:

They Are Afraid Of What They Do

Not Know

 

 

Beware Those Who Seek Constant

Crowds; They Are Nothing

Alone

 

 

Beware

The Average Man

The Average Woman

BEWARE Their Love

 

 

Their Love Is Average, Seeks

Average

But There Is Genius In Their Hatred

There Is Enough Genius In Their

Hatred To Kill You, To Kill

Anybody.

 

 

Not Wanting Solitude

Not Understanding Solitude

They Will Attempt To Destroy

Anything

That Differs

From Their Own

 

 

Not Being Able

To Create Art

They Will Not

Understand Art

 

 

They Will Consider Their Failure

As Creators

Only As A Failure

Of The World

Not Being Able To Love Fully

They Will BELIEVE Your Love

Incomplete

AND THEN THEY WILL HATE

YOU

 

 

And Their Hatred Will Be Perfect

Like A Shining Diamond

Like A Knife

Like A Mountain

LIKE A TIGER

LIKE Hemlock

 

 

Their Finest

ART

 

 

the fields rattle

with red birds;

it is 4:30 in

the morning,

it is always

4:30 in the morning,

and I listen for

my friends:

the garbagemen

and the thieves,

and cats dreaming

red birds

and red birds dreaming

worms,

and worms dreaming

along the bones of

my love,

and I cannot sleep,

and soon morning will come,

the workers will rise,

and they will look for me

at the docks,

and they will say,

“he is drunk again,”

but I will be asleep,

finally,

among the bottles and

sunlight,

all darkness gone,

my arms spread like

a cross,

the red birds

flying,

flying,

roses opening in the smoke,

and

like something stabbed and

healing,

like

40 pages through a bad novel,

a smile upon

my idiot’s face.

 

 

man shot through back while

holding robes of a young priest

who looks like a woman,

and here we hang:

moon-bright

neatly gloved,

motorcycles everywhere, bees asleep,

nozzles rusted,

climate awry,

and we shake our bones,

blind skin there,

and the soldier falls dead,

another dead soldier,

the black robe of a young priest

who looks like a woman

is now beautifully red,

and the tanks

come on through.

 

bird-dream and peeling wallpaper

symptoms of grey sleep

and at 4 a.m. Whitey came out of his room

(the solace of the poor is in numbers

like Summer poppies)

and he began to scream
help me! help me! help me
!

(an old man with hair as white as any ivory tusk)

and he was vomiting blood

help me help me help me

and I helped him lie down in the hall

and I beat on the landlady’s door

(she is as French as the best wine but as tough as

an American steak) and

I hollered her name,
Marcella! Marcella
!

(the milkman would soon be coming with his

pure white bottles like chilled lilies)

Marcella! Marcella! help me help me help me
,

and she screamed back through the door:

you polack bastard, are you drunk again? then

Promethean the eye at the door

and she

sized up the red river in her rectangular brain

(oh, I am nothing but a drunken polack

a bad pinch-hitter a writer of letters to the newspapers)

and she spoke into the phone like a lady ordering bread and
eggs,

and I held to the wall

dreaming bad poems and my own death

and the men came…one with a cigar, the other needing a
shave,

and they made him stand up and walk down the steps

his ivory head on fire (Whitey, my drinking pal—

all the songs, Sing Gypsy, Laugh Gypsy, talk about

the war, the fights, the good whores,

skid-row hotels floating in wine,

floating in crazy talk,

cheap cigars and anger)

and the siren took him away, except the red part

and I began to vomit and the French wolverine screamed

you’ll have to clean it up, all of it, you and Whitey
!

and the steamers sailed and rich men on yachts

kissed girls young enough to be their daughters,

and the milkman came by and stared

and the neon lights blinked selling something

tires or oil or underwear

and she slammed her door and I was alone

ashamed

it was the war, the war forever, the war was never over,

and I cried against the peeling walls,

the weakness of our bones, our sotted half-brains,

and morning began to creep into the hall—

toilets flushed, there was bacon, there was coffee,

there were hangovers, and I too

went in and closed my door and sat down and waited for the
sun.

 

O lord, he said, Japanese women,

real women, they have not forgotten,

bowing and smiling

closing the wounds men have made;

but American women will kill you like they

tear a lampshade,

American women care less than a dime,

they’ve gotten derailed,

they’re too nervous to make good:

always scowling, belly-aching,

disillusioned, overwrought;

but oh lord, say, the Japanese women:

there was this one,

I came home and the door was locked

and when I broke in she broke out the bread knife

and chased me under the bed

and her sister came

and they kept me under that bed for two days,

and when I came out, at last,

she didn’t mention attorneys,

just said, you will never wrong me again,

and I didn’t; but she died on me,

and dying, said, you can wrong me now,

and I did,

but you know, I felt worse then

than when she was living;

there was no voice, no knife,

nothing but little Japanese prints on the wall,

all those tiny people sitting by red rivers

with flying green birds,

and I took them down and put them face down

in a drawer with my shirts,

and it was the first time I realized

that she was dead, even though I buried her;

and some day I’ll take them all out again,

all the tan-faced little people

sitting happily by their bridges and huts

and mountains—

but not right now,

not just yet.

 

 

due to weekend conditions, and although there’s

too much smog, everything’s jammed

and it’s worse than masts down in a storm

you can’t go anywhere

and if you do, they are all staring through glass windows

or waiting for dinner, and no matter how bad it is

(not the glass, the dinner)

they’ll spend more time talking about it

than eating it,

and that’s why my wife got rid of me:

I was a boor and didn’t know when to smile

or rather (worse) I did,

but didn’t, and one afternoon

with people diving into pools

and playing cards

and watching carefully shaven T.V. comedians

in starched white shirts and fine neckties

kidding about what the world had done to them,

I pretended a headache

and they gave me the young lady’s bedroom

(she was about 17)

and hell, I crawled beneath her sheets

and pretended to sleep

but everybody knew I was a cornered fake,

but I tried all sorts of tricks—

I tried to think of Wilde behind bars,

but Wilde was dead;

I tried to think of Hem shooting a lion

or walking down Paris streets

medallioned with his wild buddies,

the whores swooning to their beautiful knees,

but all I did was twist within her young sheets,

and from the headboard, shaking in my nervous storm,

several trinkets fell upon me—

elephants, glass dogs with seductive stares,

a young boy and girl carrying a pail of water,

but nothing by Bach or conducted by Ormandy,

and I finally gave it up, went into the john

and tried to piss (I knew I would be constipated

for a week), and then I walked out,

and my wife, a reader of Plato and e.e. cummings

ran up and said, “ooooh, you should have
seen

BooBoo at the pool! He turned backflips and sideflips

and it was the funniest thing you’ve

EVER seen!”

 

 

I think it was not much later that the man came

to our third floor apartment

about seven in the morning

and handed me a summons for divorce,

and I went back to bed with her and said,

don’t worry, it’s all right, and

she began to cry cry cry,

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,

and I said, please stop,

remember your heart.

 

 

but that morning when she left

about 8 o’clock she looked

the same as ever, maybe even better.

I didn’t even bother to shave;

I called in sick and went down

to the corner bar.

 

 

and the next I remembered I’m on a table,

everybody’s gone: the head of bravery

under light, scowling, flailing me down…

and then some toad stood there, smoking a cigar:

“Kid you’re no fighter,” he told me,

and I got up and knocked him over a chair;

it was like a scene in a movie, and

he stayed there on his big rump and said

over and over: “Jesus, Jesus, whatsamatta wit

you?” and I got up and dressed,

the tape still on my hands, and when I got home

I tore the tape off my hands and

wrote my first poem,

and I’ve been fighting

ever since.