Mockingbird Wish Me Luck (12 page)

 

majestic, magic

infinite

my little girl is

sun

on the carpet—

out the door

picking a

flower, ha!,

an old man,

battle-wrecked,

emerges from his

chair

and she looks at me

but only sees

love,

ha!, and I become

quick with the world

and love right back

just like I was meant

to do.

 

 

I have lost it in Paradise Valley

with 4 women sitting in a kitchen

talking and laughing about men and love and life and

sex,

I have lost it in Paradise Valley

I have lost the word and the way and the light,

4 women sitting in the kitchen

drinking gallons of

coffee, and now

I sit in front of a window

looking at the desert,

one with Dante,

I wonder what the Paradise Valley ladies want.

these 3 sisters and a friend.

 

 

through this small window,

I see children dogs cattle horses flies sand

chickens ducks,

I hear the names of men now from the kitchen

and the girls laugh, and

I wonder, what am I

doing here?

these girls…this continual examination of the senses

and the ideas and the reasons and the facts and the

moods

destroys, destroys…

 

 

I have lost it in Paradise Valley.

you have to lose it somewhere:

I chose Arizona; although the love

last night was

good, I am lost in the desert

I have given it up.

 

 

my girlfriend

she started smashing

all my bottles

my whiskey bottle and my

beer bottles,

meanwhile

yelling and screaming,

then she ran

out the door.

 

 

3 police arrived 5 minutes

later,

one holding shotgun,

and they asked

various questions,

one of them being:

what do you

do?

 

 

I’m a writer,

I said.

 

 

the cop smirked at

me, walked over to the

typewriter,

picked up some papers

and started

reading.

 

 

it was my 2,000 word essay

on the meaning of

suicide.

 

 

he didn’t seem much

interested.

 

 

after they left

I went all the way to

Altadena

and slept with a fine

22 year old girl

some pot

3 cats

3 homosexuals

a 7 year old boy

a dog, and

a 24 by 20 photo

of me

hanging over the fireplace,

looking

wise.

 

 

she undressed in front of me

keeping her pussy to the front

while I layed in bed with a bottle of

beer.

 

 

where’d you get that wart on

your ass? I asked.

 

 

that’s no wart, she said,

that’s a mole, a kind of

birthmark.

 

 

that thing scares me, I said,

let’s call

it off.

 

 

I got out of bed and

walked into the other room and

sat on the rocker

and rocked.

 

 

she walked out. now, listen, you

old fart. you’ve got warts and scars and

all kinds of things all over

you. I do believe you’re the ugliest

old man

I’ve ever seen.

 

 

forget that, I said, tell me some more

about that

mole on your butt.

 

 

she walked into the other room

and got dressed and then ran past me

slammed the door

and was

gone.

 

 

and to think,

she’d read all my books of

poetry too.

 

 

I just hoped she wouldn’t tell

anybody that

I wasn’t pretty.

 

 

I was somewhere…somewhere in Europe

act II, scene II

Siegfried…

the whole building shook

there was flame

world ending,

bodies hurled through air

like mad

clowns…

the orchestra quit

playing.

“It’s the BOMB! THE

BOMB!” somebody

screamed. the bomb the bomb the bomb

the bomb.

I grabbed a fat blonde

tore her dress away,

gotterdammerung
!

“I don’t want to

die!” said the

blonde. the whole opera house was

coming down. blood on the

floor. more flame.

smoke. smoke. screaming. it was

terrible. I stuck it

in.

 

 

the dream of a man

is a whore with a gold tooth

and a garter belt,

perfumed

with false eyebrows

mascara

earrings

light pink panties

salami breath

high heels

long stockings with a very slight

run on back of left stocking,

a little bit fat,

a little bit drunk,

a little bit silly and a little bit crazy

who doesn’t tell dirty jokes

and has 3 warts on her back

and pretends to enjoy symphony music

and who will stay a week

just one week

and wash the dishes and cook and fuck and suck

and scrub the kitchen floor

and not show any photos of her children

or talk about her x-husband or husband

or where she went to school or where she was born

or why she went to jail last time

or who she’s in love with,

just stay one week

just one week

and do the thing and go and never come

back

 

 

for that one earring on the dresser.

 

 

I read where this 44 year old soprano of some fame

fell out of a 4 story window

and killed herself, well, I suppose this is all right

for sopranos of some fame, but

I think that 8 stories is more

reasonable.

I know this woman, a sister of the mother of my

child, some years back

her husband divorced her

and she jumped out of a 4 story window

and broke both legs

and other assorted parts.

maybe that soprano just wasn’t as tough as she was;

well, Helen got over the broken leg and parts,

and she came around one day to my place in a nice tight

pink dress, and we were alone but

nothing happened, I didn’t want it to,

and we talked

and now she is really married to something,

one of the most obnoxious souls

that I know…

“he plays the flute,” says the mother of my child,

“they get along…”

he came to see me one time and I ran him out the door:

he packed death around with him like breath chasers.

I’ve advised her to go 12 stories high

when this one fails…

I should have taken her the day she arrived in her

tight pink dress…

this guy and his flute…

he probably shits flutes…

and Helen with all that money, you think she might have

done better.

 

 

on the Hammond or through the bomb-shadowed window,

through steak turned blue with the rot of drunken days,

through signature and saliva

through Savannah,

dark running streets like veins

caught in a juniper brush, through love spilled

behind a broken shade on an October day;

through forms and windows and lines,

through a book by Kafka stained with wine,

through wives and friends and jails,

standing young once

hearing Beethoven or Bruckner,

or even riding a bicycle,

young as that,

impossible,

coming across the bridge

in Philadelphia

and meeting your first whore,

falling on the ice, drunk and numbed,

you picking up she, she picking up he,

until at last, laughing across all barriers,

no marriage was ever more innocent or blessed,

and I remember her name and yes her eyes,

and a small mole on her left shoulder,

and so we go down, down in sadness, sadness,

sitting in a grease-stained room

listening to the corn boil.

 

 

“
All your writing about pain and suffering is a bunch of bullshit
.”—

 

 

just because I told you that rock music

hurts my head

just because we have slept and awakened and

eaten together

just because we’ve been in cars and at racetracks

together

in parks in bathtubs in rooms

together

just because we’ve seen the same swan and the same

dog at the same time

just because we’ve seen the same wind blow the same

curtain

you have suddenly become a literary critic

 

 

just because you have sculpted my head

and read my books

and told me of your loves and your flirtations and

your travels

just because I know the name of your daughter

and have changed a flat tire for you

you have suddenly become a literary critic

 

 

just because you’ve had 3 poems accepted by a mimeo mag

just because you’re writing a novel about your own madness

just because you shake your ass and have long brown hair

you have suddenly become a literary critic

 

 

just because I have fucked you 144 times

you have suddenly become a literary critic

 

 

well, then, tell me,

of all these writers…who’s pain is real?

what? yes, I might have

guessed—your pain is

real. so, in the best interest of us all

wave goodbye to the living who have lost the strength

to weep, and

as white ladies in pink rooms put on

blue and green earrings,

wave goodbye to me.