POETRY

from COYOTE TANTRAS (1973)

CI

Coyote stood by the river
with his lady,
where
the North Alouette
spills into the Fraser

“Write down what you see,”
said Coyote,
“just that—
“anything else
is your own fault”

CII

Coyote sat
on a slope
above a wire corral
on the plains,
a whitefaced sorrel
ran along the Alouette
chasing crows

“What a racket”
yawned Coyote, nudging
nearer the sun

“All this room
on
one great star—

 

Who can speak?”

from THE BOY YOU HAVE ALWAYS LOVED (1976)

SONG

O fly
wouldst I
the size
of thee,
or bee,
O yes, yes
one of those,
to sleep
for ever
in a rose

HOW MANY MANGOS IN MANGO CHUTNEY

There is a broken heart
in the Chinese restaurant
sitting at a booth
with a low-tugged hat
and its eyes are on the coatrack
All night it has been telling me
to order a big meal
and get on with my soup
but I muff it
I lose the fly ball in the sun
I pull my hat lower in the booth
The sun has killed my chance of a dark day
Whoever is running on the beach
will never get to know me
There is music here
There is romance
At the crack of a bat
the shortstop breaks to his left
All of the ears in the Chinese restaurant
are not able to follow the sound
The lady with the long hands
and rouge fingernails is eyeing me
I might have known

MY FATHER

The day
he died
Pops, my mother’s father, sat
in the kitchen
drinking
tea,
toast crumbs
in his lap,
crying.
Death’s
boy, I looked out
the livingroom
window
for the big
blue car.

PARIS STREET

Wind up gray
schoolgirl’s skirt—
As she passed
copper ringlets
touched my shoulder.
Seven years later,
agonizing over
her little blue cap!

POEM FOR A PAINTER

I have a friend
A very good friend
Who is a fine painter
Just now he paints nothing but his girl
A fat Chinese girl
With blue hair
Orange eyes
Green hands and feet
This is how he sees her
And there’s no arguing it
If tomorrow she has black hair
Yellow eyes
Purple breasts
He’ll have caught it right
And the wonderful thing
Is that it amuses her
Nothing more
She doesn’t care that he’s an artist
Or that he loves her
When her red hands disappear
Into thick blue air

TWELFTH STREET

for Butch Hall

Beautiful girl
hurrying home
down 12th Street
on a windy night
no way I’ll ever
know her
run my hand
up her leg
while she’s reading

POEM UT ANIMUM NOSTRUM PURGET

She lov’d Villon—
I was a poet, but
no Villon;
she lov’d Scarlatti—
I made music, but
most unlike Scarlatti;
she lov’d Renoir—
and I did not paint.

from PERSIMMONS (1977)

RETURNING BY BOAT ON A COLD RIVER

Along
the rocky coast
the wind
has silenced
the houses

My boat
floats
to shore
head down,
I hurry
toward home,
forsaking
the sea

 

Are things
any better
in the mountains?

After the painting by Chikuden

from CHINESE NOTES (1978)

Separated by a river
I try not to think of you
At least my tears
please the flowers

Startled by a bird
I clutch my heart
as if you’d flown
out from it.

This summer
more than before
storms miss land
Each morning
fresh flowers
in the green
peacock vase.

NOTE TO A FRIEND FAR AWAY

Cranes slowly
settle on
nearby pond
clouds blow through
no lovers
or friends
birds, weather
will do

A CHINESE NOTE TO MARY LOU

This backyard
is our Giverny—
Roses precise as Monet’s,
leaning hollyhocks,
haystack compost,
sparrows on the
warped-plank bench.
Sleeping cats, black
and gray, in vine
tangle—orange, blue,
pink, red, brown,
green, yellow—all
below the Japanese sky.

from FLAUBERT AT KEY WEST (1997)

MARIA LA O

In 1959, my cousin Chris and I
accompanied my Uncle Les
from Tampa to Jacksonville,
where he had business to do.
I was twelve, Chris sixteen.
Jacksonville was a small town
then, palms lined the street
where I bought a papaya drink
from a sidewalk stand.
We ate lunch in a big hotel.
I watched people through
a long, plate-glass window
behind our booth. After lunch,
Uncle Les passed out Havanas.
We lit them and puffed away
as the three of us left the hotel
and strolled down the street.
Passersby stared at me, a small boy
smoking a big, black, Cuban cigar.
I loved the taste of it, bitter
after eating sweet flan
for dessert, and breathed deeply
the romantic aroma of smoke
and tropical air. Thirty-five
years later I recall the smell,
the blue sailfish shirt
I wore, the Florida that
isn’t there any more.

TO TERRY MOORE

for Dutch Leonard

This morning I am not
at my best
but I woke up
dreaming of Terry Moore
red apples in her sweater
sitting on a stool
in Shack Out On 101
sweet Terry Moore
who couldn’t act
it’s so painful to watch her
even in my dream
she looks uncomfortable
I want to take her in my arms
that perfect fifties body
hair shook loose over right eye
Tell me, Terry
when you were young
were your lovers ever gentle?

A NOTE ON INSPIRATION

for Duane Big Eagle

Baudelaire kept a Creole mistress
to whom he never made love
She was six feet tall
an alcoholic and a whore
Many of his Fleurs du Mal
were written for her
Who’s to know if she ever
read any of them or cared
that he wrote her love poems
It’s likely she did not
and probable that
Baudelaire died a virgin
all of which makes
for a rather sad history
Rimbaud and Verlaine, of course
fared not much better
Of those we remember
only Villon had his way
and he was hanged
The sports and divertissements
of French and other poets
are not now so easily translated
nor were they ever

FAREWELL LETTER FROM JEANNE DUVAL TO CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

Charles, from the beginning you always
made me laugh. Sending flowers to my
dressing room at Le Théâtre du Pantheon
as if I were a real actress
not just the piece of fluff
trotted out for a few moments
in a brief costume
to make the boys’ cocks hard.
You had money, you were charming
and respectful. You appeared impervious
to the fact of my blackness.
When we entered a café together
you were like a proud buck with his doe.
All eyes were on us as we paraded through
and you treated me as if I were a great lady;
you had the finest manners.
The apartment you bought for me
was furnished exquisitely.
It resembled a Kaliph’s boudoir.
If only you had been a Kaliph!
That would have made my being a whore
more palatable. Expensive whores
live longer than the rest.
Nadar knew me before you, yes,
as did Blanville.
When you first brought me to your suite
at the Hôtel Lauzun I pretended
never to have been there before.
But I had, several times, with different men,
men who knew how to satisfy a woman,
and themselves.
You created me for yourself as an object
only, a stone creature whom you could idealize
and pretend to worship and torture
yourself over. It was madness!
I’m a slut, yes, perhaps worse;
a drunkard, too. But I am real!
I exist here in this time, not in
any other and I never will.
Your reliance on women such as Luchette
and Madame Meurice has stunted you.
They encourage your impotence.
“My vampire!” you called me. It’s what
you wanted, begged for, demanded.
Only by cruelty could you be convinced
of anything. Being cruel is
a soul-consuming task, and one
which amuses me to a lesser degree
than you would suppose.
I plead exhaustion, Charles.
I release myself from this obligation to you.
My sweet, poetry is not enough.

THE SURREALISTS COME TO CALIFORNIA

Cruising in a Cadillac
down sunny 101
“Earth Angel” by The Penguins
on the radio
André Breton at the wheel
Louis Aragon and Robert Desnos,
who is dozing,
in the backseat
Breton shouts, “The old Dali
would have loved this!
The Dali of before Gala!”
“Man Ray was right about America,”
says Aragon
“All around us is
the evidence of inevitability”
“Inevitability is irrelevant,”
says Desnos, coming to life
“The true Surrealists of America
are the Oklahoma Indians
who buy big cars with oil money
and drive them until
they run out of gas,
then abandon them”
“Poor Eluard,” says Breton
“he would have loved
to have accompanied us”
“Poor Péret,” says Aragon
“he never kept a sou”
“Poor us,” says Desnos
“snow, a woman’s glove,
such gloomy symbols”
“Had Reverdy lived in California,”
says Breton
“he would never have written
‘winter chased me
in the streets’ ”
“You must remember,” says Desnos,
only one eye open
“this highway is a manifestation
of the route of Apollinaire”
“Yes,” says Breton, “beauty
is no longer a nuisance”
“Or,” adds Aragon, “a dream”

from REPLIES TO WANG WEI (2001)

POEM AFTER WANG WEI

I keep
in
my apricot chest
the willow
branch
you gave me
the morning
we parted
at Peach Blossom
Spring
brittle now
I handle it
tenderly
How can it be
you are
no longer
there
to dangle
your fingers
in the bright
green
water

IN MEMORY OF SUWA YU

Creek
crawling through
woods
How many thousands
of years
without stopping
I’m happy
to listen
longer
than that

NEW POEMS

BACK IN AMERICA

Old cowboy
crossing Oakland
street
with rodeo limp,
spotted face
and hands
boots scuffed, cracked
filthy shirt
untucked—
stuffed in left
back pocket
of faded jeans
The Iliad—
if only Homer
could see him,
headed
to dump hotel
half-pint
of bad bourbon
in bag
dreaming glories
of Greece
and his
lost
horse

ON VIEWING THE MANUSCRIPT SCROLL OF JACK KEROUAC’S NOVEL ON THE ROAD IN THE TOSCA BAR, SAN FRANCISCO

Lying in state, under glass,
partially unrolled to reveal
flood of words describ’d
Mississippi River near New Orleans
1947—an American Shroud,
Davia Nelson called it, like
the Shroud of Turin, holy remnant
of modern Literature, naively
woven tapestry—
Kerouac would have lov’d
this, I think, his own worn
Shrouded Stranger, well-travel’d,
displayed for religious purpose,
himself collapsed Catholic Buddhist
pilgrim in constant search
for the Sacred, sanctified today
here in sere mute Tosca cathedral
light, lone silver’d stream of sun,
God’s finger pointed toward window
sarcophagus casket containing
phantom tome brought out by hand
half-century before by Jack Kerouac
from America’s burning Egyptian heart.

SMALL ELEGY FOR CORSO to Fernanda Pivano

Gregory Corso’s buried in Rome
a few weeks ago next to Shelley
in an acattòlico cemetery in Testaccio
Sitting on a bench in the Piazza Cavour
I recall Nanda telling me last December
Gregory had his balls cut off
“I don’t care,” he told her, “I fucked enough.”
Now at twilight in the Quartiere Prati
watching rich women walk big dogs
past palm trees under plum-colored sky
suddenly there’s Corso ten years ago or more
at a baseball game in San Francisco
shouting at a player, “Pull up your pants!
It’s a disgrace to the uniform!”
Three rows in front I looked around,
“Gregory,” I said, “what happened to
your teeth?” “They’re gone!” he said
“Who needs teeth after fifty?”
We met again at a wedding in Bolinas
Quietly he told me how secretly he
envied Kerouac having died so young,
only 47. “If only he could have enjoyed
himself more, but he was always drunk.”
O Gregory, may you take eternity for all
it’s worth, the same as you captured
your time on earth, knowing all along
there was nothing real to lose.
Roll over, Captain Poetry,
tell old Percy the news.

POEM

That the thought
of losing you
is even in my head
disturbs me
I’ve never cared
for anyone
in this way before
never thought
that I could make
such a mistake
to fall in love
with the real girl
of my dreams
Now it’s too late
the hunter captured
by the game
You sleep
with my soul
in your mouth
When we kiss
I can taste it

A DREAM

As I told you
last night
we were walking
in a dark forest
we got lost
from each other
I had to find you
I called your name
you answered
but your voice
was faint
as if you were suddenly
impossibly far away
I followed the sound
for what seemed
like days
I didn’t want
to give up
to leave you alone
in the forest
I didn’t know if
you were really lost
or where I was
Finally, I saw you
walking along a path
I didn’t know was there
You stopped by a tree
I waited to see
which way you would go
I heard a noise
behind me
and looked around
but nothing moved
Now you were
beside me
and we moved together
along the path
You took my hand
It’s true, you said,
I’m a little lost
I followed you anyway
The path disappeared
but we kept going
This is love, I said
You turned and kissed me
Yes, you said, I know.

SHOOTING POOL IN THE DARK

Living with you
is like shooting pool
in the dark
impossible to guess correctly
which ball to hit next
or even know what stripe
or solid, number or color
is still there or where
Life with you is like
being asked to run
a neverending table
blindfolded and bleeding
from a shotgun wound
I once saw Willie Mosconi
run 91 balls in a row
shooting straight pool
at Benzinger’s in Chicago
I’d bet anything
he couldn’t have done it
with a hole
this size
in his heart

TRUE LOVE

Your sickness made me
a little sick, it’s
true—I still
feel it
Mayakovsky got down
on his knees
and declared
his love
to his last
mistress
a few hours after
he’d met her
Remember me
at the hotel
in Paris,
on my knees
in the lift?
We’re all the same
men of too much passion
and a little talent—
some a little more
than others
We fool ourselves
into thinking
we’re strong
then complain
the rest of our lives
crippled by
the consequences