Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit (3 page)

 

I was sitting in a chair

in the dark

when horrible sounds of torture

and fear

began in the brush

outside of my window.

it was obviously not a male cat

and a female cat

but a male and a male

and from the sound

one appeared to be much larger

and was attacking with the intent to

kill.

then it stopped.

 

 

then it began again

worse this time;

the sounds were so terrible

that I was unable to

move.

 

 

then the sounds stopped.

 

 

I got up from my chair

went to bed and

slept.

 

 

I had a dream. this small grey and white

cat came to me in my dream

and it was very

sad. it spoke to me,

it said:

“look what the other cat did to me.”

and it rested in my lap

and I saw the slashes and

the raw flesh. then it

jumped off my lap.

 

 

then that was all.

 

 

I awakened at 8:45 p.m.

put on my clothes and walked outside

and looked around.

 

 

there was nothing

there.

 

 

I walked back inside and

dropped two eggs

into a pot of water

and turned up the

flame.

 

…the drawing is poor and I know little of the plot:

a man with a stable, world-earned face and the necktie of

respectability, and a satisfied pipe; and his wife—

signified by the quick ink of black hair (just ever so

tousled with having
babies
and guiding them safely through

the falls): there is a grandmother who sits somewhat like

a flowerpot: allotted an earned space but not really

useful
; and a couple of smiling, knee-climbing gamins

two little Jung and Adlers

full of moot, black-type questions,

and, of course,

a young girl troubled with young loves

(they take these things so much more
seriously
than the

young men who

go behind the barn);

and there
is
a young man—her, I presume barn-wise, brother

with this great tundra, this
shield
of black hair;

he is horribly healthy

and dressed in the latest in sport shirts

in the best barn-wise manner;

this big…brother (16? 17? 18? God wot?)

is usually (when I read this, which is not very often)

leaning forward over the car seat

(he sits in the back, like the author)

and makes some…comment on LIFE, capital all-the-way LIFE

that is so VERY true

that it just…upsets
every
body

except the poor kiddies who don’t know what the hell it’s

all about in spite of their Jung and Adler

and they just ride along round-eyed and sucking at their

lollypops all up in the pretty pure white clouds;

but, lo, the headman grinds his pipe grey-faced against this

sporty truth that old men let lie like overgrown

gas-meter covers; and the mother (wife wot?) draws down

a long black eyebrow and one more strand of hair becomes

unattached in the cool long struggle; and

Grandma, oh, I don’t know—

by then I have looked away; but I remember the girl,

the young girl with young loves

is always
especially
angry

because the back of the barn has been blamed on her…

locked with René the Frenchman, the struggling…painter or

wot?

nobody wants to face it but this…fat…sports-wear shirt

character (who is
really
a nice strong boy who will really

be O.K. some day) keeps bringing the cow out from behind the
barn

with the bull; but he is young

and laughs

and all somehow bear up;

but best is his…
explanation
of it all,

of the cow and the bull,

with the inherent and instinctive…wiseness of his

youth;

the
explanation
usually comes in the morning

over the breakfast table—

before all this sickly struggling ordinary mess of common…

humanity has had a chance

to seat itself

the healthy white…face laughs and tells it all;

he’s been sitting there waiting to tell it all,

he’s been sitting there with the little…twins (or wot?)

as they spill porridge so cutely with their little spoons,

this big…happy oaf who’s never had a toothache

has been sitting waiting the entrance of his elders

(Granny who must put in her teeth, and Papa who is worried

about the office, and Mama who isn’t exactly straightened out

yet; and the young girl who loves with faith, anger and…

purity) in they come

and he
throws
out an arm

and tilting his healthy…carcass madly back in the chair

before the sun-pure kitchen curtains

and the little lovable, struggling bungling group

he says his great say,

and in the balloon above his head are the words

and by the twisted agony of the faces

I am led to believe
something
has been said,

but I read again

looking carefully at the great happy spewing oaf’s face

the brown great deepness of the eyes

and the young girl’s teeth pushed out sour as if she had

bitten into some lemon of truth,

but there is something wrong

there is some mistake

because the sheet of paper I hold

slants and angles in the electric light

into the open dizziness of my dome

and it huddles and curls itself into a puffy knot

and pushes at the back of my eyes

and pulls my nerves taut-thin from toe to hair-line

and I know then that

the great spewing oaf has said

nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing

nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing

nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing

and now,

on the rug

under the chair

I can see the comic section

folded in half,

I can see the black and white lines

and some faces I don’t care to discern;

but a thin illness overcomes me

at the sight of this portion of paper

and I look away

and try not to think

that much of our living life

is true to the little paper faces

that stare up from our feet

and grin and jump and gesture,

to be wrapped in tomorrow’s garbage

and thrown away.

 

The flies are angry bits of

life;

why are they so angry?

it seems they want more,

it seems almost as if they

are angry

that they are flies;

it is not my fault;

I sit in the room

with them

and they taunt me

with their agony;

it is as if they were

loose chunks of soul

left out of somewhere;

I try to read a paper

but they will not let me

be;

one seems to go in half-circles

high along the wall,

throwing a miserable sound

upon my head;

the other one, the smaller one

stays near and teases my hand,

saying nothing,

rising, dropping

crawling near;

what god puts these

lost things upon me?

other men suffer dictates of

empire, tragic love…

I suffer

insects…

I wave at the little one

which only seems to revive

his impulse to challenge:

he circles swifter,

nearer, even making

a fly-sound,

and one above

catching a sense of the new

whirling, he too, in excitement,

speeds his flight,

drops down suddenly

in a cuff of noise

and they join

in circling my hand,

strumming the base

of the lampshade

until some man-thing

in me

will take no more

unholiness

and I strike

with the rolled-up paper—

missing!—

striking,

striking,

they break in discord,

some message lost between them,

and I get the big one

first, and he kicks on his back

flicking his legs

like an angry whore,

and I come down again

with my paper club

and he is a smear

of fly-ugliness;

the little one circles high

now, quiet and swift,

almost invisible;

he does not come near

my hand again;

he is tamed and

inaccessible; I leave

him be, he leaves me

be;

the paper, of course,

is ruined;

something has happened,

something has soiled my

day,

sometimes it does not

take a man

or a woman,

only something alive;

I sit and watch

the small one;

we are woven together

in the air

and the living;

it is late

for both of us.

 

 

of course it is nonsense to try to patch up an

old poem while drinking a warm beer

on a Sunday afternoon; it is better to simply

exist through the end of a cigarette;

the people are listless and although this is a

poor term of description

Gershwin is on the radio

banging and praying to get out;

I have read the newspapers,

carefully noting the suicides,

I have also carefully noted

the green of some tree

like a nature poet on his last cup,

and

bang bang

there they go outside;

new children, some of them getting ready

to sit here, and do as I am doing—

warm beer, dead Gershwin,

getting fat around the middle,

disbelieving the starving years,

Atlanta frozen like God’s head

holding an apple in the window,

but we are all finally tricked and

slapped to death

like lovers’ vows, bargained

out of any gain,

and the radio is finished

and the phone rings and a female says,

“I am free tonight;” well, she is not much

but I am not much either;

in adolescent fire I once thought I could ride

a horse through the streets of anywhere,

but they quickly shot this horse from under,

“Ya got cigarettes?” she asks. “Yes,” I say,

“I got cigarettes.” “Matches?” she asks.

“Enough matches to burn Rome.” “Whiskey?”

“Enough whiskey for a Mississippi River

of pain.” “You drunk?” “Not yet.”

She’ll be over: perfect: a fig

leaf and a small club, and

I look at the poem I am trying to work with:

 

 

I say that

the backalleys will arrive upon

the bloodyapes

as noon arrives upon the Salinas

fieldhands
….

 

 

bullshit. I rip the page once, twice,

three times, then check for matches and

icecubes, hot and cold,

with some men their conversation is better than

their creation

and with other men

it’s a woman

almost any woman

that is their Rodin among park benches;

bird down in road awaiting rats and wheels

I know that I have deserted you,

the icecubes pile like fool’s gold

in the pitcher

and now they are playing

Alex Scriabin

which is a little better

but not much

for me.