from 5 to 30 it was
only women, then
for almost one year
it was only men
now it’s like the first
5 years and back
to everyone again
ethnic beaches, ethnic streets,
ethnic hangouts, jetties, kids
got sand & their first glimpse
of hair where it never was
you piled into nosed & decked Chevies & Mercs
carried baseball bats to Bradley Beach to
beat up on Jews—You knew, they had all the
money & no restrictions on their sex like
Christians
Crazy Mixed Up kids with names like
Sleepy, Face, Skippy, Skootch, Me Too Morrisey
& Nutsy McConnell imitated themselves & Marlon
Brando, danced to *Frankie Lyman & The Teenagers*
or *Little Richard* & sometimes
holding their fathers’ guns
made women girls light their cigarettes trembling
letting them see just enough of it beneath their
pink or charcoal grey to make them happy or sick
always glad god made man out of dirt & not sand
you got drunk in your clubhouse or rented rooms
pretended you were really recording In The Still of The
Night or your own secret sleeper under
some name like The Shrapnels or The Inserts not
Spartans AC (Athletic Club) or The Archangels SC
(social . . .
the way we’re still lining up
Where we bend
the world bends
Where we join
the air joins
Where we lie
the land lies
Where we move
the sea moves
Where we break
where we break
the air breaks
the land breaks
the sea divides
Where we break
the world bends
1
This is the night they turn out the trees,
the rope we skipped, the sound of
asphalt cooling. This is the night they
left us. You used to say: This is
the night they are always leaving us.
2
In the puzzle there are four pieces:
the soap, the boat, the fish and the—
It’s green, we remember that much, very
far away and steep and has a place
for each of four parts which are the
boat with the sail and the bar of soap
and the fish from the bottom of this
puzzle, but what have you done with
3
Don’t even try to turn around
4
I never made it to Morocco, Paris, Tangiers,
Tokyo, Madrid. I just live here, in Newark
& wait, for Morocco, Paris, Tangiers, Tokyo,
& Madrid to make it to me, here in Newark.
your grandfather being
alone lived in it loved
it & gave birth to another
felt his arms noticed the potato skin
he was hard & white & something to chew
inside
He had a dream called him-in-America
where potatoes were roses
He carried one gnarled & petrified
to keep away arthritis
Where he lived if you dug too deep
the earth was white wet & hard
“With people there has been trouble
With the potato we have been happy”
the quiet ones
It was a myth we believed
we invented but
now we know while we were busy
watching the quiet ones
the others led us into the sea
| Everybody | ||
| wanted her | ||
| to do | ||
| a trick | ||
| for them | ||
| but | ||
| she had a trick of her own | ||
| that she wanted to do for | herself | |
| only | ||
| she hated | ||
| tricks | ||
Can you hear the adolescent
laughter in the Jersey pines?
That sound of a gas station turning
over in its long nights sleep?
What is the meaning of summer
if the menthol of your fingernails
doesn’t touch me from the grave?
Anemone bones we whispered of
between trips to the car trunk
and quick changes behind towels
or the rest rooms of gasoline
stations whose owners were called:
Ma.
Can you hear that rustling
on the highway where the tires
trailed our innocence behind
like the intestines of the desire
we kept hanging on the rear view?
Ma, we said, where in those pine
woods, under the tender feet of
tourists, where in all that fur
is there a place to tie ones skates
and hang a key around your lovers neck?
The guy down the street just
“blew his brains out” They
carried him out on a stretcher
all bloody faced and torn and
the kid next door ran home
told his ma who told us, said
“Some guy down the street just
got stabbed in the nose & died”
but we found out, we found out
different “blew his brains out”
“Just back from Vietnam” the
kid said later “like my dad”
*
Last week across the street
some lady was raped by a tight
rope walker, now this is true
he lost his job in the circus
when he fell off and hurt his
neck so it would swing all day
like this, while he worked here
as a janitor and handy man and
told all the housewives tales
about the circus and his neck
until the other night he tapped
softly on this foreign womans
door and said “It’s the main-
tenance man, your power’s off”
She tried the lights and said
“What do I do?” “Let me in”
he said “and I’ll check your
fuse box” here the story gets
confused but it’s clear he had
a knife and somehow got naked
and raped the woman before she
got the knife away and screamed
My wife rolled over and said
“Did you hear that, sounded like
five quick shots” but I wasnt
saying a thing They caught him
The bullets were fired by the guy
across the hall from the woman
He said he just fired to make the
rapist halt, said he saw this man
running out of the building, naked
in the moonlight, but it turns out
this guy with the revolver had
been the best of buddies with the
tight rope walker who happened to
have already served time for rape
Now they got a new janitor who has
a neck like everybody else here
*
Today the guy next door told me
if it comes down to it and we all
find ourselves on the barricades
we’d probably be on opposite sides
but he promised me this “I’ll
only shoot at your legs, cause
youre my friend” which is better
than my brother-in-law the cop who
said “I’d shoot my own father if he
was breakin the law and tryin to
get away” he shook his head then said
softer “Ya gotta respect the law”
I strap on my holster
the one with the pine cone design
shove my automatic into it
slip a small book of famous quotations into
my pocket to offset the weight of the gun
take an ice pop out of the freezer
the paper sticks to the popsicle
sticks to my fingers sticks to my coat
I put the popsicle down on the sink
wash my hands and wipe off my coat
when I pick it up again it’s melting
I try to suck the moisture from it
I try to avoid dripping some on my coat
or pants or shirt or holster
with the pine cone design on it
or the automatic with the gas station design
on the handle
I fail and now the automatic is sticky
I try to take off my coat
without getting it sticky too
I fail to keep the coat clean
but succeed in removing it
I wash my hands while whats left of the
popsicle melts on the kitchen sink
I roll up my sleeves
I remove the sticky automatic from
the holster with the pine cone design
I wash the automatic handle with the
gas station design I’m looking
at the popsicle and trying to hurry
so I can get whats left of it before it all
melts away when the automatic goes off
the bullet enters my forehead with
the boulevard design and I forget
about the popsicle I forget
about the bullet
I go out
“un natural”
(un natural?
to love yourself
those like you?
“It’s only natural with a woman”
(think of sucking a cock )
“UGH!!! THAT DIRTY SMELLY UGLY SWEATY
THING!!!”
(think of a woman sucking
your
cock
not so ugh?
then what must you think of her “them”
any woman is a fag & vice versa?
meaning you don’t like men &
you don’t like women
or think much of them
if you can
| see | ||
| enjoy | ||
| desire | to have them do things you despise doing |
&
you don’t like yourself
after all
it could be your cock )
There’s a window in our house looks out on 1956
every time I draw the blinds a thirteen-year-old kid
cries himself to sleep
and in a ladies room on the boardwalk somewhere
a nineteen-year-old woman with a moustache doesn’t
even wonder why she did it
can’t remember his name
sits on a wood slat chair and dreams, no, tries to remember
doesn’t know he cried in the sand under the boardwalk she
works on
doesn’t know he was thirteen
doesn’t give a shit
doesn’t, isn’t, sure of anything but boardwalks, sitting down,
how people act
in bathrooms
in her
Not even thirteen, eleven, twelve, just barely a bird
with feathers
Usually we just leave the blinds down, turn over the record,
go back to sleep til the kids come
then its time to do: what it was like before good old
rock’n’roll
I wish I could tell you about it.