The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills (7 page)

 

I have practiced death for so long

and still I have not learned it,

and tonight I came in

and my goldfish was not in his bowl,

he had leaped

for reasons of his own

(I had changed the water; it might have been

a fly…)

and he was now on the rug

with black spots upon his golden body,

and he was still and he was stiff

but I put him back in the water

(some sound told me to do this)

and I seemed to see the gills move,

a large air bubble formed

but the body was still stiff

but miraculously

it did not float flat—

the tail part was down in the water,

and I thought of ships, of armies,

hanging on,

and then I saw the small fins

near the underside of the head

move

and I sat down on the couch

and tried to read,

tried not to think

that the woman who had given me these fish

was now dead 6 months,

the world going on past living things

now no longer living,

and the other fish had died.

he had overeaten, he had eaten his meal

and most of the meal of the small one,

and now the woman was gone

and the small one was stiff,

and an hour later

when I got up

he floated flat and finished;

his eyes looking up at me did not look at me

but into places I could not see,

and the slave carried the master,

this goldfish with black spots

and dumped him into the toilet

and flushed him away.

 

 

I put the bowl in the corner

and thought, I really cannot stand

much more of this.

 

 

dead fish, dead ladies, dead wars.

 

 

it does seem a miracle to see anybody alive

and now somebody on the radio is playing

a guitar very slowly and I think, yes,

he too: his fingers, his hands, his mind,

and his music goes on but it is very still

it is very quiet, and I am tired.

 

 

all the efforts of the Spanish to effect peace

were in vain and Domenico came over the hill

and shot the white chicken and raped the woman

in the hut, and then he rode up the road

noticing the pink anemones, the lazy toads,

and when he got to town he ate a hot tamale,

and through the window he saw the fleet

and the fleet put its guns even with the town,

he saw that, and in came a wind of fire,

and in the smoke he grabbed the cigarette girl

and raped her, then he got back on his mule

which stepped carefully over the dead

and he rode back to the village where his own hut

still stood, and the old lady was outside

rubbing clothes on rocks by the stream,

and in the air came the planes

looking them over

banking their wings

and finally deciding

that they were not worth the bombs,

they left

like large undecided butterflies,

and Domenico went inside and fell

upon the floor

and the old lady came in

wiggling what was left,

and he said,
war is a horrible thing,

and he wondered if anybody would ever bother to rape her,

he would not stop them, they

could have it, not much there, nothing,

and he decided that sleep was better than nothing

and he went to sleep.

 

 

driving in from the track

I saw a woman in green

all rump and breast and dizziness running

across the street.

she was as sexy as a

green and drunken antelope and

when she got to the curbing she

tripped and fell

down and

sat in the gutter and

I sat there in my car

looking at her and

oddly

I felt most impassive as if

nothing had happened and

I sat there looking at this

green creature until

a moving van 60 feet long came

to a stop and

helped the

lady

up.

a young man in white overalls

flushed red and the girl was built

all around all around and

stupid with falling and stupid with life and

swaying on the tower stilts of her

heels

she stood there rubbing her

white knees and

the young man kept talking to

her

he was big dumb blond pink and lonely

but then

the woman asked him

where the nearest bar was and

he grinned and pointed down the street and

gave it

up

he got back into the truck and

60 feet full of

furniture and blanket and stove

pulled on down the street

and the green antelope

crossed the street

toward the bar

wobbling and shaking

shaking and wobbling

everything and

we sat transfixed and

watching

until

in the backed-up traffic

behind me

a man of strength

honked

and I put the thing in drive

slowing for the big dip

by the market

that could tear your car in

half

and they all followed me

slowing for the dip

too:

18 cars full of men thinking of

what could have been—

about the one who

got away and

it was about sunset and

heavy traffic and heavy

life.

 

 

one of the terrible things is

really

being in bed

night after night

with a woman you no longer

want to screw.

 

 

they get old, they don’t look very good

anymore—they even tend to

snore, lose

spirit.

 

 

so, in bed, you turn sometimes,

your foot touches hers—

god,
awful!—

and the night is out there

beyond the curtains

sealing you together

in the

tomb.

 

 

and in the morning you go to the

bathroom, pass in the hall, talk,

say odd things; eggs fry, motors

start.

 

 

but sitting across

you have 2 strangers

jamming toast into mouths

burning the sullen head and gut with

coffee.

in 10 million places in America

it is the same—

stale lives propped against each

other

and no place to

go.

 

 

you get in the car

and you drive to work

and there are more strangers there, most of them

wives and husbands of somebody

else, and besides the guillotine of work, they

flirt and joke and pinch, sometimes tend to

work off a quick screw somewhere—

they can’t do it at home—

and then

the drive back home

waiting for Christmas or Labor Day or

Sunday or

something.

 

 

They slit his pockets and shot him in his car,

eighteen hundred dollars split four ways,

and I used to see him at the track

watching the tote

and going the last-flick bullrush toward the window;

he never took a drink

and he never took a woman home with him,

and he never spoke to anyone,

and I never spoke to anyone either

except to order a drink

or if a hustler had good legs and ass

to let her know

over a scotch and water

that later would be o.k.;

what I am getting at is

that this guy was a pro,

it was a business with him,

he didn’t come out to holler and get drunk

and get fucked—

he came out to
make it,
which is better

than punching another man’s timeclock;

when I saw him bullrushing the $50 window

late in the year

I knew he was making it much better than I;

the board had showed a lot of false flashes,

some nut with a roll was dropping in one or two grand

at the last minute, but this guy was just that,

a nut with money, and we finally had to go through

the routine of finding out what he was betting

and flushing the horse out

before we got our bets down; this made one sweaty

late bullrush…anyhow, the quiet one didn’t

worry about this and always laid his bet a little ahead

of time and walked off; he kept getting better,

his clothes looked better, he looked calmer,

and you could see him off to the side,

after most races, shoving bills into his wallet,

and Jeanette, one of the better hustlers, said,

“I’d start him off with a blow-job and then twist

his nuts until he told me how he did it…”

“Would you do that to me, baby?” I asked.

“With your method of play you’re lucky to have

admission,” she said downing a drink that had cost me

85¢. “Do you still have a collection of Mozart?”

I asked her. “What’s that got to do with it?” she asked.

I walked off.

 

 

I read about it in the papers next day. Witnesses

said there were 3 of them and a woman at the wheel.

I saw Jeanette at the bar. “Hello, Mozart,” she said.

She looked a little nervous and at the same time she

seemed to feel pretty good. “I’ll take a double

shot right now,” I said. “And after the next race,

I think I’ll have a vodka. I’m going to mix them all day.

Haven’t

been real drunk in a couple of years.”

 

 

She watched me lighting a cigarette, then I told her, “Also, I

want a pack of smokes, and you are going home with me tonight and

we are going to listen to Mozart all night. You are going to

like it. You are going to have to like it.”

 

 

She paid for the drink. “You’re looking for trouble,” she told

me. “Bitch,” I said, “I have been trying to commit suicide for

years.”

I had a good day. We went home and listened to Mozart for hours.

She was as good as ever on the springs. Only this time there was

no charge. Then she cried half the night and said she loved me.

I knew what that was for.

 

 

The next afternoon at the track I didn’t speak to her, and I won

one hundred and twelve dollars, not counting drinks and admission,

and I kept looking back through the rearview window as I drove,

bigtime, and then I began to laugh, shit, they knew I was nothing,

I was safe; I should tell the screws but when a man is dead

the screws can’t bring him back.

 

 

I got home and opened a fifth of scotch, tired of Mozart

I tried
The Rake’s Progress
by Strav.

I read the Racing Form for about 30 minutes, put in a long distance

call to some woman in Sacramento, drank a little more and went to

bed, alone, about 11:30.

 

 

I sit up in bed at night and listen to you

snore

I met you in a bus station

and now I wonder at your back

sick white and stained with

children’s freckles

as the lamp divests the unsolvable

sorrow of the world

upon your sleep.

 

 

I cannot see your feet

but I must guess that they are

most charming feet.

 

 

who do you belong to?

are you real?

I think of flowers, animals, birds

they all seem more than good

and so clearly

real.

 

 

yet you cannot help being a

woman. we are each selected to be

something. the spider, the cook.

the elephant. it is as if we were each

a painting and hung on some

gallery wall.

 

 

—and now the painting turns

upon its back, and over a curving elbow

I can see ½ a mouth, one eye and

almost a nose.

the rest of you is hidden

out of sight

but I know that you are a

contemporary, a modern living

work

perhaps not immortal

but we have

loved.

 

 

please continue to

snore.