Your Niece's Speech Night
"For us memory has become a burden."
"Only you know. You are not merely unknown to me but unknowable."
"What was I hoping for? What do we ever hope for and isn't it fortunate how innocent we are in hoping for it? Sunlight suddenly hits the earth, warming it till something grows, something we had not thought about, had not thought possible but now see and see it to be beautiful. The weather here is unexpectedly balmy. We quicken our step and the smallest thing excites us. Your smile, have I mentioned it? It can awaken a tenderness in me that had lain dormant for a longer time than I can measure. We are in quite agreement on all that matters. Everything is quiet and warm. We are not afraid to close our eyes, and while there is nothing at all contrived about this moment, we have been waiting for it all our lives. We close our eyes together. No one is offering advice: there is no need. We lie together on the cool dry grass, partially entwined and gently breathing in our own felicity. Do you remember? We lay on the cool dry grass and it was as if it were there before the fall. Can you remember?"
"Have I ever loved you? Yes, before there was reason, and still later, when there was none, even though, as it turned out, the best thing about us was the person I would have become had you been as I had cast you. I am broken now, feeling the wind on my skin till it pushes my bones to mock me, when there is no wind. I am burnt dry by the sun till the feeling is gone on one side, when there is no sun. They tell me these are the symptoms. Your betrayal is as clear to me now as our Swedish vodka, but I cannot allow you to be so far removed from the person I thought you were that I am unable to love you. You see, I realized something when you came along. It was not a realization that pays. It would be of no interest to Walker and it has no tax implications for anyone. But I realized that I needed to love you. It defined me, and if you did not exist I would have had to invent you, minus the betrayal. But perhaps that is all of you, the sine qua non of you."
The Hong Kong Fir Doctrine
"I have been alone before but now it will be worse. I am hungry for you, for your voice, your touch, your hand on my face. It is as real as anything I have ever experienced, and nothing - no sleep, no conversation, no idea or image - can hold this hunger at bay, not even for a moment. You are with me as I dress, as I go through the motions, becoming by day again a suited man with suitably qualified opinions recommending for or against some or other suit just to kill time in the hope that the hunger will dissipate, in the hope that I may feel some slight diminution in the need I have to be with you. I have never been sure that you knew quite how much I loved you."
"But I hear you in the middle of the night. You come to me and won't let me sleep. I put out my hand to touch the side of the bed that you have known. The sheets are cold. I will grow old in them. I have been alone before, but this is worse because now I have you to remember and nothing like you to look forward to. Do you remember?"
A Tale in Two Cities
"Can a lifetime of humiliation and intimidation dumped comprehensively on hopes and dreams, a bloodied shirt from a random drunken explosion of hate, can all of this be assuaged only by his incineration? I could see him burning. He would burn well. He did everything well. My father has so much to teach me. Don't teach me this. I will not see it as love, I promise you. Don't risk it. There will be nothing to remember. I would have to end the uncertainty myself. I would be next. Don't try me. Stay, you who have always fought, and love me overwhelmingly in your inadequate way."
"I have every confidence that loneliness will one day be recognized for what it is, a pathology. Whether it will be psychiatrists, neuropsychologists or even philosophers who discover this I can't say, but in the same way that is is now thought that various types of depression have something to do with the presence or absence of serotonin in the brain, so loneliness will one day be correlated with the absence of something other than people. It is possible to be lonely in a crowd at a party, in a marriage, and, of course, by yourself. Clearly, other people have almost nothing to do with it. Loneliness is an illness."
"In a genuine tragedy there is no hero to die finally, but the stage itself falls apart, beginning at the edges."
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Wednesday, September 3, 2014
Bukowski, II. (Love is A Dog From Hell)
you
you're a beast, she said
your big white belly
and those hairy feet.
you never cut your nails
and you have fat hands
paws like a cat
your bright red nose
and the biggest balls
I've ever seen.
you shoot sperm like a
whale shoots water out of the
hole in its back.
beast beast beast,
she kissed me,
what do you want for
breakfast?
----
the 6 foot goddess
...
"she's wild
but kind
my 6 foot goddess
makes me laugh
the laughter of the mutilated
who still need
love,
and her blessed eyes
run deep into her head
like mountain springs
far in
and
cool and good.
she has saved me
from everything that is
not here."
---
communion
horses running
with her miles away
laughing with a
fool
Bach and the hydrogen bomb
and her miles away
laughing with a
fool
the banking system
bumper jacks
gondolas in Venice
and her miles away
laughing with a
fool
you've never quite
seen a stairway before
(each step looking at you
separately)
and outside
the newsboy looking
immortal
and the cars go by
under a sun
like an enemy
and you wonder
why it's so hard
to go crazy -
if you're not already
crazy
until now
you've never seen a
stairway that looked like
a stairway
a doorknob that looked like
a doorknob
and sounds like these sounds
and when the spider comes out
and looks at you
finally
you don't hate it
finally
with her miles away
laughing with a
fool.
----
how to be a great writer
you've got to fuck a great many women
beautiful women
and write a few decent love poems.
and don't worry about age
and/or freshly-arrived talents.
just drink more beer
more and more beer
and attend the racetrack at least once a
week
and win
if possible.
learning to win is hard -
any slob can be a good loser.
and don't forget your Brahms
and your Bach and your
beer.
don't overexercise.
sleep until noon.
avoid credit cards
or paying for anything on
time.
remember that there isn't a piece of ass
in this world worth over $50
(in 1977).
and if you have the ability to love
love yourself first
but always be aware of the possibility of
total defeat
whether the reason for that defeat
seems right or wrong -
an early taste of death is not necessarily
a bad thing.
stay out of churches and bars and museums,
and like the spider be
patient--
time is everybody's cross,
plus
exile
defeat
treachery
all that dross.
stay with the beer.
beer is continuous blood.
a continuous lover.
get a large typewriter
and as the footsteps go up and down
outside your window
hit that thing
hit it hard
make it a heavyweight fight
make it the bull when he first charges in
and remember the old dogs
who fought so well:
Hemingway, Celine, Dostoevsky, Hamsun.
if you think they didn't go crazy
in tiny rooms
just like you're doing now
without women
without food
without hope
then you're not ready.
drink more beer.
there's time.
and if there's not
that's all right
too.
------
alone with everybody
the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
and the women break
vases against the walls
and the men drink too
much
and nobody finds the
one
but they keep
looking
crawling in and out
of beds.
flesh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than
flesh.
there's no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.
nobody ever finds
the one.
the city dumps fill
the junkyard fill
the madhouses fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill
nothing else
fills.
----
when I think of myself dead
I think of automobiles parked in a
parking lot
when I think of myself dead
I think of frying pans
when I think of myself dead
I think of somebody making love to you
when I'm not around
when I think of myself dead
I have trouble breathing
when I think of myself dead
I think of all the people waiting to die
when I think of myself dead
I think I won't be able to drink water anymore
when I think of myself dead
the air goes all white
the roaches in my kitchen
tremble
and somebody will have to throw
my clean and dirty underwear
away.
----
there once was a woman who put her head into an oven
terror finally becomes almost
bearable
but never quite
terror creeps like a cat
crawls like a cat
across my mind
I can hear the laughter of the masses
they are strong
they will survive
like the roach
never take your eyes off the roach
you'll never see it again.
the masses are everywhere
they know how to do things:
they have sane and deadly angers
for sane and deadly
things.
I wish I were driving a blue 1952 Buick
or a dark blue 1942 Buick
or a blue 1932 Buick
over a cliff of hell and into the
sea.
----
beds, toilets, you and
me---
think of the beds
used again and again
to fuck in
to die in.
in this land
some of us fuck more than
we die
but most of us die
better than we
fuck,
and we die
piece by piece too--
in parks
eating ice cream, or
in igloos
of dementia,
or on straw mats
or upon disembarked
loves
or
or.
: beds beds beds
: toilets toilets toilets
the human sewage system
is the world's greatest
invention.
and you invented me
and I invented you
and that's why we don't
get along
on this bed
any longer.
you were the world's
greatest invention
until you
flushed me
away.
now it's your turn
to wait for the touch
of the handle.
somebody will do it
to you,
bitch,
and if they don't
you will -
mixed with your own
green or yellow or white
or blue
or lavender
goodbye.
----
99 to one
the blazing shark
wants my balls
as I walk through the meat section
looking for salami and cheese
purple housewives
fingering 75 cent avocados
know my shopping cart is an
oversized cock
I am a man with a switchball watch
standing in a honky-tonk phonebooth
sucking strawberry red titty
upsidedown in a Philadelphia crowd.
suddenly all about me are screams of
RAPE RAPE RAPE RAPE RAPE
and I am stiffing it to something beneath me
dyed red hair, bad breath, blue teeth
I used to like Monet
I used to like Monet very much
it was funny, I thought, the way he did it
with colors
women are so expensive
dog leashes are expensive
I am going to start selling air in dark orange bags
marked : moon-blooms
I used to like bottles full of blood
young girls in camel-hair coats
Prince Valiant
Popeye's magic touch
the struggle is in the struggle
like a corkscrew
a good man doesn't get cork in the wine
the thought has occurred to millions of men
while shaving
the removal of life might be preferred to
the removal of hair
spit out cotton and clean your rearview
mirror, run like you mean it, drunk jock,
the whores will win, the fools will win,
but break like a horse out of the gate.
---
the crunch
too much
too little
too fat
too thin
or nobody.
laughter or
tears
haters
lovers
strangers with faces like
the backs of
thumb tacks
armies running through
streets of blood
waving winebottles
bayoneting and fucking
virgins.
or an old guy in a cheap room
with a photograph of M. Monroe.
there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock.
people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.
people just are not good to each other
one on one.
the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.
we are afraid.
our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners.
it hasn't told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.
or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone
untouched
unspoken to
watering a plant.
people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.
I suppose they never will be.
I don't ask them to be.
but sometimes I think about
it.
the beads will swing
the clouds will cloud
and the killer will behead the child
like taking a bite out of an ice cream cone.
too much
too little
too fat
too thin
or nobody
more haters than lovers.
people are not good to each other.
perhaps if they were
our deaths would not be so sad.
meanwhile I look at young girls
stems
flowers of chance.
there must be a way.
surely there must be a way we have not yet
thought of.
who put this brain inside of me?
it cries
it demands
it says that there is a chance.
it will not say
"no."
-----
melancholia
the history of melancholia
includes all of us.
me, I write in dirty sheets
while staring at blue walls
and nothing.
I have gotten so used to melancholia
that
I greet it like an old
friend.
I will now do 15 minutes of grieving
for the lost redhead,
I tell the gods.
I do it and feel quite bad
quite sad,
then I rise
CLEANSED
even though nothing is
solved.
that's what I get for kicking
religion in the ass.
I should have kicked the redhead
in the ass
where her brains and her bread and
butter are
at...
but, no, I've felt sad
about everything:
the lost redhead was just another
smash in a lifelong
loss...
I listen to drums on the radio now
and grin.
there is something wrong with me
besides
melancholia.
you're a beast, she said
your big white belly
and those hairy feet.
you never cut your nails
and you have fat hands
paws like a cat
your bright red nose
and the biggest balls
I've ever seen.
you shoot sperm like a
whale shoots water out of the
hole in its back.
beast beast beast,
she kissed me,
what do you want for
breakfast?
----
the 6 foot goddess
...
"she's wild
but kind
my 6 foot goddess
makes me laugh
the laughter of the mutilated
who still need
love,
and her blessed eyes
run deep into her head
like mountain springs
far in
and
cool and good.
she has saved me
from everything that is
not here."
---
communion
horses running
with her miles away
laughing with a
fool
Bach and the hydrogen bomb
and her miles away
laughing with a
fool
the banking system
bumper jacks
gondolas in Venice
and her miles away
laughing with a
fool
you've never quite
seen a stairway before
(each step looking at you
separately)
and outside
the newsboy looking
immortal
and the cars go by
under a sun
like an enemy
and you wonder
why it's so hard
to go crazy -
if you're not already
crazy
until now
you've never seen a
stairway that looked like
a stairway
a doorknob that looked like
a doorknob
and sounds like these sounds
and when the spider comes out
and looks at you
finally
you don't hate it
finally
with her miles away
laughing with a
fool.
----
how to be a great writer
you've got to fuck a great many women
beautiful women
and write a few decent love poems.
and don't worry about age
and/or freshly-arrived talents.
just drink more beer
more and more beer
and attend the racetrack at least once a
week
and win
if possible.
learning to win is hard -
any slob can be a good loser.
and don't forget your Brahms
and your Bach and your
beer.
don't overexercise.
sleep until noon.
avoid credit cards
or paying for anything on
time.
remember that there isn't a piece of ass
in this world worth over $50
(in 1977).
and if you have the ability to love
love yourself first
but always be aware of the possibility of
total defeat
whether the reason for that defeat
seems right or wrong -
an early taste of death is not necessarily
a bad thing.
stay out of churches and bars and museums,
and like the spider be
patient--
time is everybody's cross,
plus
exile
defeat
treachery
all that dross.
stay with the beer.
beer is continuous blood.
a continuous lover.
get a large typewriter
and as the footsteps go up and down
outside your window
hit that thing
hit it hard
make it a heavyweight fight
make it the bull when he first charges in
and remember the old dogs
who fought so well:
Hemingway, Celine, Dostoevsky, Hamsun.
if you think they didn't go crazy
in tiny rooms
just like you're doing now
without women
without food
without hope
then you're not ready.
drink more beer.
there's time.
and if there's not
that's all right
too.
------
alone with everybody
the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
and the women break
vases against the walls
and the men drink too
much
and nobody finds the
one
but they keep
looking
crawling in and out
of beds.
flesh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than
flesh.
there's no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.
nobody ever finds
the one.
the city dumps fill
the junkyard fill
the madhouses fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill
nothing else
fills.
----
when I think of myself dead
I think of automobiles parked in a
parking lot
when I think of myself dead
I think of frying pans
when I think of myself dead
I think of somebody making love to you
when I'm not around
when I think of myself dead
I have trouble breathing
when I think of myself dead
I think of all the people waiting to die
when I think of myself dead
I think I won't be able to drink water anymore
when I think of myself dead
the air goes all white
the roaches in my kitchen
tremble
and somebody will have to throw
my clean and dirty underwear
away.
----
there once was a woman who put her head into an oven
terror finally becomes almost
bearable
but never quite
terror creeps like a cat
crawls like a cat
across my mind
I can hear the laughter of the masses
they are strong
they will survive
like the roach
never take your eyes off the roach
you'll never see it again.
the masses are everywhere
they know how to do things:
they have sane and deadly angers
for sane and deadly
things.
I wish I were driving a blue 1952 Buick
or a dark blue 1942 Buick
or a blue 1932 Buick
over a cliff of hell and into the
sea.
----
beds, toilets, you and
me---
think of the beds
used again and again
to fuck in
to die in.
in this land
some of us fuck more than
we die
but most of us die
better than we
fuck,
and we die
piece by piece too--
in parks
eating ice cream, or
in igloos
of dementia,
or on straw mats
or upon disembarked
loves
or
or.
: beds beds beds
: toilets toilets toilets
the human sewage system
is the world's greatest
invention.
and you invented me
and I invented you
and that's why we don't
get along
on this bed
any longer.
you were the world's
greatest invention
until you
flushed me
away.
now it's your turn
to wait for the touch
of the handle.
somebody will do it
to you,
bitch,
and if they don't
you will -
mixed with your own
green or yellow or white
or blue
or lavender
goodbye.
----
99 to one
the blazing shark
wants my balls
as I walk through the meat section
looking for salami and cheese
purple housewives
fingering 75 cent avocados
know my shopping cart is an
oversized cock
I am a man with a switchball watch
standing in a honky-tonk phonebooth
sucking strawberry red titty
upsidedown in a Philadelphia crowd.
suddenly all about me are screams of
RAPE RAPE RAPE RAPE RAPE
and I am stiffing it to something beneath me
dyed red hair, bad breath, blue teeth
I used to like Monet
I used to like Monet very much
it was funny, I thought, the way he did it
with colors
women are so expensive
dog leashes are expensive
I am going to start selling air in dark orange bags
marked : moon-blooms
I used to like bottles full of blood
young girls in camel-hair coats
Prince Valiant
Popeye's magic touch
the struggle is in the struggle
like a corkscrew
a good man doesn't get cork in the wine
the thought has occurred to millions of men
while shaving
the removal of life might be preferred to
the removal of hair
spit out cotton and clean your rearview
mirror, run like you mean it, drunk jock,
the whores will win, the fools will win,
but break like a horse out of the gate.
---
the crunch
too much
too little
too fat
too thin
or nobody.
laughter or
tears
haters
lovers
strangers with faces like
the backs of
thumb tacks
armies running through
streets of blood
waving winebottles
bayoneting and fucking
virgins.
or an old guy in a cheap room
with a photograph of M. Monroe.
there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock.
people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.
people just are not good to each other
one on one.
the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.
we are afraid.
our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners.
it hasn't told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.
or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone
untouched
unspoken to
watering a plant.
people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.
I suppose they never will be.
I don't ask them to be.
but sometimes I think about
it.
the beads will swing
the clouds will cloud
and the killer will behead the child
like taking a bite out of an ice cream cone.
too much
too little
too fat
too thin
or nobody
more haters than lovers.
people are not good to each other.
perhaps if they were
our deaths would not be so sad.
meanwhile I look at young girls
stems
flowers of chance.
there must be a way.
surely there must be a way we have not yet
thought of.
who put this brain inside of me?
it cries
it demands
it says that there is a chance.
it will not say
"no."
-----
melancholia
the history of melancholia
includes all of us.
me, I write in dirty sheets
while staring at blue walls
and nothing.
I have gotten so used to melancholia
that
I greet it like an old
friend.
I will now do 15 minutes of grieving
for the lost redhead,
I tell the gods.
I do it and feel quite bad
quite sad,
then I rise
CLEANSED
even though nothing is
solved.
that's what I get for kicking
religion in the ass.
I should have kicked the redhead
in the ass
where her brains and her bread and
butter are
at...
but, no, I've felt sad
about everything:
the lost redhead was just another
smash in a lifelong
loss...
I listen to drums on the radio now
and grin.
there is something wrong with me
besides
melancholia.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
