Who won? I feel like
I’m almost there—what
were we competing for?
“the store” “the farm”
the barn where it all
began—the can of spice—
the nice lips on her face—
the place where we fell
asleep at last in peace &
woke up to the air we
remembered that isn’t
there anymore—the emp-
eror has no lungs left—
he’s only pretending to
breathe—& as for us—
who won—what?
| Hell is | ||
| no escape. | ||
| And no acceptance. |
| Ah, heaven. | ||
| Heaven is | ||
| more complicated. |
We are too tired to figure this one out—
We want someone else to do it for us—
We want to be told what it’s all about
and not have to pay any attention—
We want to have sex with everyone we meet
almost, but not risk death by having sex
with anyone—We want a relationship
that will last forever if only the one
we’re in will come to an end so we can
find the right one—again—We want
to be poets and actors and songwriters
and directors and politicians and saviors
and gods—but while we’re waiting for
all that to happen let’s just see how
much fun we can make of all those other
poets and actors and songwriters and
directors and politicians and saviors
and gods—We want it all but it’s
just too much—We want each other but
we feel like we’re being suffocated so
we just want to be alone so we can spend
all our time on the computer or phone
with someone else who is also alone—
We want our own homes if somebody else
will clean them and care for them and
maybe even pay the bills—We can take
care of ourselves as long as we really don’t
have to because then we’re so tired of
doing just that we have to get a cat or
a dog or several of each and birds and
pigs and take up smoking the cigs again
until we’re so crowded with plants and
electronic devices we have to find some
one to share all this bliss but none of
them seem to know how to kiss anymore
and we’re not so enlightened that we
want to be bored with the lovers we’re
prepared to change a few things for
as long as their willing to change
everything for us—not because we
want to control them, we just want
to make sure they really love us,
because now we’re not so sure we
really love them but it’s too much
trouble and time and energy and risk
to start this shit all over again with
someone new—so we will be whoever
they want us to for awhile until we
can get them to be who we wish we
really were back when we knew who
we wanted to be by now—ourselves,
only better.
It’s time for beauty
to make its return—
not anorexic girls in
post-heroin mode—not
middle-class children of
divorce pretending to be
death until they are—
not aging babies crying
for their milk & honey—
not “not”—any of it—
just sit & wonder, awed—
owed the comfort of an
eye in sight of itself—
this is a fact, beauty
doesn’t ache, it reverberates
inside our consciousness of
bliss—I can’t believe I just
said that—“Rip don’t!”—
“Nardo—Nar—doe”—“Aghhh!”—
What I mean here is De-
liverance—from all that is
so boringly appalling about
fate—a turning on to all that
is inspiringly appealing about
hate for the nondescript of—
make a list—your own—of
what you’d want to hear on
the phone—see in the mirror
out the window of your car—
another world—the one we’re
in—kiss me—touch my hair—
anywhere—show me the cover
of a book that is as beautiful
as we all once were—be.
[ . . . ]
“Frank O’Hara is the
Fred Astaire of American Poetry”
whispers Bruce Andrews during
That’s Entertainment, Part II
I wanted to be the Frank Sinatra
*
I thought the Garden of Eden a
metaphor for pubic hair—I meant
the garden I wanted to give
—I couldn’t help what it was
there—at 34 I don’t think too much
about death but it’s there as a
comfort to the living—
—despite the fun—and
joy!—in the twist of the torso
perfecting its fall—o my god how
I thank you for all the bodies—
the gardens—
what’s there—
[ . . . ]
shit
I could always predict
but couldn’t make anything on it!
lacked—still do—more so—
a certain kind of “wit” I so admire
and covet and am entertained by—
the difference between Gene Kelly
and Fred Astaire—
Tom Raworth and Edmund White—
I appreciate and hear them all
the “decongealment” of the
imaginative
function
the ideology of mass
they call it “spreading it thin”
two “it”s contradicting the mass
in our home the communion of
“art” in “the masses” of my father
(now dead) saying “work, work, work”
in my head and the rest in theirs
the Clint Eastwoods of
“competence”
imagine the chance again—
nice summer day—1958
at the kitchen sink
getting a drink of water—
sun pouring in through the windows—
two views and the air through
the open “sashes” and the sound
of the traffic—occasional and
distant till a horn honks in
front and you know it’s for you—
something to do!
(here too—August 1976 New York City—
the sky is an historical blue
through the windows and the air
through the open “casements”—)
shit—that chance—“gone”—
and the wit to grasp it with it—
October 24, 1951
. . . Oh my goodness I almost
forgot to tell you. Michael got a
regular report card for the first time
and his average was 97.2. We were
all very excited about it. His marks
were Religion 95, Arith. 96, English 97,
History 98, Reading 99, Geog. 100, Spelling
96, Penmanship (like all the rest of you
kids) 85.
. . . Michael has a teacher this year (it is
her first year teaching) and she told
Joan that he is a brilliant child (?).
We shall see by the end of the year if
she knows what she is talking about.
I doubt it.
[ . . . ]
[ . . . ]
7—my son—with me
missing his mother & sister
his sister with his mother
missing him & me—
me missing his sister, having
missed him before he was
with me—everyone sad—
*
9 years old—my daughter
I wanted to take her with us
I am conciliatory or resigned
[ . . . ]
“boom” my son
asleep
crouched at the end
of a narrow bed
“the way he likes it”
& me
working hard at
“the job”—
like “dues”—
endless & pointless
call from her—
job no longer “pointless”
now necessary to make
money to live “the life”
(dinner, dance, date,
“darling” . . . )—
[ . . . ]
shit—
I need her
and a month ago
I didn’t even know her—
[ . . . ]
I just flash all day
on her smile and touch
and all the good things
I love so much—
everything—oh oh oh—
[ . . . ]
meanwhile Miles
cried after West
Side Story (on TV)
“not because I’m
sad—but because
it was so good”
said it was his
favorite movie—even
better than Star
Wars
—later
said he’d wear his
levis, a plain tee
shirt (“no writing
on it”) and his
reversible jacket
with the beige side
out—as an extension
of West Side Story style—
7 years old!—a “genius”
[ . . . ]
still not only “good”
but getting better!
made love 4 times after
waking up—3 times before
going to sleep!—and
could’ve kept going
[ . . . ]
the sunsets from
the Chrysler building & beyond
& love
[ . . . ]
have so much to do
& I’m not doing
any of it
etc.
*
(reading Laura Riding
& Gerald Burns)
(talking with Miles—football,
school, food, the past, etc. & reading to him
from William Saroyan story collection)
[ . . . ]
my son— & me—
our love—
what I had long wanted—
more than etc.
*
raining
I love it
dark days in the city
somehow
so many in the ’50s
early ’60s—when I was
here—considering it home
no matter where I was
“stationed” or coming from—
alone on the wet streets
cold, but not freezing—
reading the
atmosphere
the sound of the car tires
on the slick dark
the ways the water
falling makes everyone
eccentric
and alone—
I always loved rainy days like today
so much more than etc.
[ . . . ]
Once upon a time
I could rhyme
anything, but
thought it was
a cheap trick,
like being born
with a big dick
and using it
to get ahead
in Hollywood.
I would never do that.
Or like those old
cowboy movies
where the hero
always wore a white hat,
and the bad guys black.
That seemed to be
a California perception
of what looked good
on a handsome man.
Back East white was
the color for dairy queens
and guys so rich they
were terminally passive.
Black was the color
for the kind of men
who wouldn’t have
known what a den
is for, or ever bore
us with their lack
of passion.
The hottest women
wore black, and
the classiest,
the saddest,
the smartest.
White and black,
now and then,
me and you,
what’ll we do
about all we know
to be no longer true,
and yet still be truthful
so we can survive
these new dark ages, huh?
Maybe, you can go
home again
if you’re willing to
take responsibility for
what you find there.
Even the air
is tired from what we’ve
all been through,
the scare
we’ve all been talking to
when we talk to each other
and discover
we’re all a lot more
careful in the ways
we own our lives.
Some people say
there’s an art to that—
yeah, the art of compromise.
Gertrude Stein
wine
I don’t know
I think they’ve lost their glow
for me.
See, I haven’t been able to
drink either one for years now.
How did I know?
I mean, what to keep and
what had to go—
Like all those William Saroyan and
William C. Williams tomes—
those little homes I grew up in
even if I was already grown
when I first started reading them.
J.W. Dant bourbon was the thing
I liked the most.
Toasting is what Blacks called
rapping back in the old days
before it became a part of the music biz.
“The Wiz” was an underrated movie,
says D. M., as he produces another
amazing TV show, buys and sells horses,
makes his BMW go with me in it
and I still owe him several big ones.
The man’s a genius, says his agent,
after he tells me “your eyes glow,”
and all I know is my heart has broken
like those horses they send out too soon
to compete in races they can’t win yet.
Only I ain’t no horse,
and I been out there for years,
they didn’t just send me out too early.
Although—
Hey, what do I know?
I’m so dependent on what other people think about me.
That’s not the way I want to be.
I don’t want to be like Lawrence Harvey in
Walk on the Wild Side either. I only saw it
because it was the first time Jane Fonda played a whore.
That was long before the Viet Nam war—
or not, that wasn’t a war, I forgot, Congress never
declared war on anybody in that one, that was—
what? What was that one? Not a “police action”—
that was the Korean War—it’s funny isn’t it,
how we’re allowed to call them wars after they’re over—
well, they’re never really over, anyway—
I can’t remember anything about that movie—
except Jane Fonda was almost as young as I was then,
and she was beautiful in this fragile sexy
teenage woman kind of way that she isn’t today—
somewhere in there she turned from fragile to brittle,
the kind of distinctions real poets love to play with
but not before they throw out a lot of obviously
intelligent and imaginatively deep images so that
everyone will know it’s poetry—and smart poetry
which is why I stopped doing that a long time ago
except now and then just to slow down the pace
of the ideas that always race through my mind
when it’s time to write a poem which for me is
any and all the time because you see I’m a poet
and I can always make it rhyme just like the
rappers do, only middle-aged white poets ain’t
supposed to, they’re supposed to write about
how the rocks are talking to them tonight in
the muffled tones of their ex-wife which
implies a marriage to the earth that has been
broken up, only, when the rocks talk to me they
say stuff like what up honky homey? or whoa,
you see that stone, check her out, or, hey man,
it’s okay, you’re gonna make it through today
and come tonight you’ll be alright no matter
what they say, you are just as much who you
were meant to be as we are brother, and the
earth is our mother too, hey someday you
might be a rock yourself like you
thought you were in 1956—
when the colored girls did go
“doo, da doo, da doo”—
When I wrote this poem
I thought there was a healing going on—
a profound healing. I thought it was
no accident that movies like
Field of Dreams and Rain Man
(no matter how we feel about
their politics or art) were proving
the lie in all the cynical projections
of what people want. What they want
is a healing to take place.
Gorbachov became a hero
around the world not because
he knew how to manipulate
the media—remember his speeches?
It wasn’t him, it was what he represented,
the healing of a wound almost
a century old. Wasn’t it obvious
by the response of the world to him,
or to the Chinese students in
Tieneman Square, or the release
of Nelson Mandela, or the fall of the
Berlin Wall, or the Russian people
standing up to the tanks & the old ideas—
it’s a healing we all want?
& hey, I knew all about “wilding”
and gang rape and gang violence
and gang stupidity and cowardice
and all the rest. I was in a couple
of gangs when I was a kid. I also
know the cops can be a gang too sometimes.
I come from a family of cops, &
if you don’t think it’s tough being
stopped by the police & hearing
“What’s your brother gonna say?”
—just think about a cop asking—
“What’s this gonna do to Ma?”
But I think we know and so do
those kids what’s good for the soul,
the spirit, the heart. Yet when that good
has been torn apart by public figures
who act as if they have no responsibility
toward this world—whose world is it anyway?
Or rocknrollers or movie stars
or TV celebrities who speak out
about pollution and then personalize it in
their own lives by polluting hearts
and souls and minds with messages
they take no responsibility for.
And I’m not talking about sexual
jokes and innuendoes. I’m talking
about violence that is presented as power,
and reward and even inspirational.
I’m talking about accepting and even
celebrating the cynical attitudes that everyone
seemed to acquiesce to in the ’80s—
the “Reagan Years”—for which we are
all now paying the price. I’m talking about
adding to the confusion and fear
and hatred and rage by accepting
the unacceptable, by ignoring the unignorable,
by pretending reality is worse than
it is and then giving in to that pretension
until it becomes reality. I WANT THE HEALING.
And I believe with everything that’s in me
that even those who will write parodies,
or speak them, as soon as they finish reading this,
of what they can easily dismiss
and turn into a self-defensive joke
about my own hypocrisy or pretensions—
even the wits who can turn misery
into charisma, and though I know I’m
no wit I also know I sometimes can do it too—
even us poor victims of our own
delusions of sincerity, no matter how hip,
WANT A HEALING TO OCCUR and want it now.
The whole world is longing and
has been longing for just that.
Why else is Jesus so popular? Or Buddha?
Or the Mohammed of the real Koran?
What is it that repulses us in the struggle
of the Arabs and the Jews, or Bosnians and
Serbs or Blacks and Whites in
South Africa or here not so long ago,
but the lack of a healing between two cultures
that generate all our own fears
about differences and the rage
that fear of the different and unknown
can create in total strangers
when they see us tearing down
the walls that make those differences.
I’ve said it before and I’m not
gonna stop—I don’t care if
you’re from Time because you think
some “star” is reading poetry
somewhere, or from the academy
because you think one of your own is there—
or look down your nose at those
whose poetry is accessible and
even vital to people who don’t care—
that’s not what people come out to hear—
I believe they come for the healing, for in
hearing the troubles and longings and truth
of other lives, no matter how famous or rich
or unknown or Jewish or young or frail or
perfect or a wreck, they see the common thread,
that it isn’t about women and men
and young and old and black and white
and rich and poor and famous and unknown,
it’s about this deep and abiding and
relentless yearning for a healing to
take place in all of us and between all of us.
It’s not even about humans and animals
and nature and commerce and all that either.
Because even there, even businesses and trees
and cars and the very air and sea
and earth itself are making that
longing known. You can hear it in the wind
and smell it on the flower. All creation
is crying out for a healing to take place.
It is time. It is beyond time, it is timeless.
And yes of course it begins with me
and you, who else? And yes I have
felt it since we met and held each other in a way
that offered no defenses no obeisance
to the differences that we know so well
and so truly are just the flowering of the creative
imagination of the universe and not
a reason to run or quit or give up in
frustration and anger and cynicism. No,
the differences only help us to see
how much we are the same in our souls—
soulmates for sure. How else explain that two
such unlikely people can feel
so comfortable in each other’s arms,
can ignore all the warnings from past experiences
and cynical friends that something
is unreal if there is no doubt, no struggle.
The only struggle is with acceptance—acceptance
of the truth. And the truth is
we all need a healing. And you
and I can feel it happening for us, in ways that
go beyond our simple male and
femaleness, our white and blackness,
our age differences, our family and career and
neighborhood and all the other
differences, beyond our humanness—
a healing that like Selby says heals those issues
for all time, in all eternity, for all
the years we’ve spent on earth so far
and all we will continue to spend. And if that
can happen for us, in the simple act
of trust—what more can it do for
the rest of the world.
I never believed people who said
you can’t make movies or music or
books that don’t have violence or superficial values
or all the bullshit negativity
this town and every town and
every business tries to lay on those of us
who refuse to relinquish our
innocence and hope because
we have not succumbed to the dope of
giving up. Hey I know this sounds
like preaching, so hold me accountable.
I’m talking about a healing here, that I needed
desperately all my life and still do,
and that I finally feel has truly begun
with you. And not just you, but others too.
Oh people people let us start anew
and pledge right now to each other
that we will no longer take part in any project
whether business or art or any affair
of the heart or collaboration or conversation
or celebration or even thought that isn’t true.
So let’s start, right here, with me
& you—& you & you & you & you
& you . . .
all the forbidden fruit I ever
dreamt of—or was taught to
resist and fear—ripens and
blossoms under the palms of my
hands as they uncover and explore
you—and in the most secret
corners of my heart as it discovers
and adores you—the forbidden fruit
of forgiveness—the forbidden fruit
of finally feeling the happiness
you were afraid you didn’t deserve—
the forbidden fruit of my life’s labor
—the just payment I have avoided
since my father taught me how—
the forbidden fruit of the secret
language of our survivors’ souls as
they unfold each other’s secret
ballots—the ones where we voted
for our first secret desires to come
true—there’s so much more
I want to say to you—but for
the first time in my life I’m at
a loss for words—because
(I understand at last)
I don’t need them
to be heard by you.
I wasn’t bad,
I was just misunderstood.
I wasn’t trying to burn down my grammar school.
I was just experimenting out of boredom,
to see how much oxygen it took to keep the
matches going before I slammed my desk shut
on the flames—and one time I waited too long.
But hey, that’s how you learn, right?
I was just bored—weren’t you?
Isn’t that why you wanted it all,
while I got suspended, expelled,
kicked out, arrested, tried, court
martialed, exiled, 86ed, asked to leave,
fired, let go, walked out on, divorced,
broke, hurt, kicked in the ass, the
heart, the brain, again and again,
knowing all along it was only because
I was misunderstood—but I understood
you, and you understood me, I was
the bad boy and you were the woman
who wanted it all, wanted the flowers
and the poems, the soft caress and
the sweet sweet acceptance of your
getting it all wrong every time you
tried to dress the part or break my
heart because I was too bad when all
you wanted was just bad enough to
make you feel the love was tough
enough to last and still be passionate.
But bad boys don’t last, that’s
what makes them bad—you can’t
depend on them for anything but
not being there when it gets too
square and you want square too
because you are the woman who
wants it all—the lawyer and
the biker bum, the guy who never
leaves and the guy who only knows
how to run. And you think you might
see that in me because I’m slowing
down, I’m learning how to clown
around with the bad boy image
before it gets sad ‘cause a guy
ain’t a boy no more. I mean bad boys
are one thing but bad old men—
that’s something else again,
even when you’re the woman
who wants it all.
The news all seems bad—
just like it all seemed good only a year or so ago—
the money isn’t where we thought it was—
neither are we—
How does it work?
Does anybody know?
Where did the music go?
Did you see Michael Jackson’s video?
I did this thing I do—I saw this woman and
felt the need to give her all my power—then
I couldn’t think of anything but her & getting
her to be my mate because I needed her because
she had the power.
“So what,” they say, “that’s nothing new.”
They think I did the same with you.
I know, it’s true that
recessions come & go, like wars, conspiracies,
& music you can really listen to.
What’s permanent is—what?
That’s what we all would like to know.
It isn’t attitude—thank God that changes
as we grow. It isn’t gratitude—sometimes
it comes too slow or not at all—& what
the hell is “beatitude” anyway?—another
fancy word for feeling good at nobody’s
expense? I call that “love”—the only
guarantee of happiness, & not for me
coming from you but coming from me
for whatever, if I can let the fear of
loving go—you know—like how you feel
when you just love that song or pet or
painting or book or person or job or joke
or all that stuff you loved so long ago—
or not so long ago. Do it again—let
the fear of loving go—no matter what you
know—because you know this too—that
it is the only way to go to go.
there’s more than more than more than
more than enough so why isn’t enough enough and where is it
written that enough will never be enough except
in the amazing arrogance of societies and
institutions and governing bodies of immune deficiency
allowances of tabloid mentalities that breeed breeeed
breeeeed breeeeeeed breeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed infinity when
all we are asking for is food.
all we are asking for is enough space to live a life of
enough space to enough space to live a life of gratitude
when all we are asking for is no more hope no more dope no
more ways of being anything less than the stewards of all
that god has created including each other which means
caretakers which means taking care of which means caring for
each other and every other living thing and everything is
living from that star that is supposed to have died so many
thousands of years ago and yet still shines in your eyes to
that grain of sand in the shoe of the man sleeping on the rock
of all our past discouragement—
I’m talking about the reason we are here today
to look at each other and say what can I do for you
to help you get through whatever lack is causing you pain or
sadness or fear or anger or feelings of victimization—
there is only one nation, and it is the nation of
love, we weren’t wrong in the ’60s we were just too
self-righteous about it thinking whatever made us shout
also gave us the clout to have it all our way so I ask
today for the humility of the saints and the bodhisattvas,
the courage of the martyrs and the Kama Sutra the love of
every god who ever gave solace to any lonely soul like
mine and yours, I am reassured by that love no matter how
many tanks and guns and chemical weapons our collective
greed has ignited in the hearts of even lonelier souls who
have no recourse but belligerence and death to satisfy the
myth of their invulnerability—
we are all vulnerable, today’s success stories, tomorrow’s
homeless, let us all be warriors for love as if we were
sent from above to heal these wounds of neglect, because,
hey, guess what—we were.
One what?—
Nigger, kike, wop, honky, paddy, redneck, frog,
cocksucker, bastard, bitch, motherfucker, dog—
punk, nerd, dweeb, sissy, jerkoff, creep,
queen, faggot, bulldyke, Republican sheep,
right-wing, leftist, Trotskyite, capitalist pig,
facelifted faketitted phony-in-a-wig,
impotent, premature ejaculator,
stand-up comic, poet, actor,
waiter, chauffeur, screenwriter, masturbator,
sibling, in-law, spouse, kid, victim, manipulator,
codependent, alcoholic, addict, abuser,
liar, cheater, thief, quitter, loser,
photographer, reporter, lawyer, dealer,
doctor, chef, model, hair-stylist, healer,
quack, booshie, commie, jock, gambler, gangster,
fuck-up, greedhead, homie, rambler, prankster,
hippie, yuppie, beatnik, artist, freak,
monster, asskisser, cartoonist, geek,
hoser, dickhead, wanker, slant-eyed dwarf,
fatso, pasty-face, nothin-but-soft,
sexist, racist, ageist, whore,
Buddhist, born-again, sober bore,
white, brown, yellow, red, black and blue,
he, she, them, us, it, me, you,
rocks, mountains, clouds, trees,
rivers, valleys, inlets, seas,
birds, horses, whales, kittens, bees . . .
Hey!—
This could go on forever,
when all we really gotta say is:
Everything and us—
| Us | ||
| and | ||
| everything— |
from the smallest quark
to the biggest galaxy—
it’s all the same,
and it only takes one
to know one.
One what?