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a.m.
    dedication is for chess players.
    the glorious single cause is
    waiting on the anvil
    while
    smoking, pissing, reading Genet
    or the funny papers;
    but maybe it’s early enough yet
    to write your aunt in
    Palm Springs and tell her
    what’s wrong.
     

no. 6
     
     
    I’ll settle for the 6 horse
    on a rainy afternoon
    a paper cup of coffee
    in my hand
    a little way to go,
    the wind twirling out
    small wrens from
    the upper grandstand roof,
    the jocks coming out
    for a middle race
    silent
    and the easy rain making
    everything
    at once
    almost alike,
    the horses at peace with
    each other
    before the drunken war
    and I am under the grandstand
    feeling for
    cigarettes
    settling for coffee,
    then the horses walk by
    taking their little men
    away—
    it is funereal and graceful
    and glad
    like the opening
    of flowers.
     

don’t come round but if you do…
     
     
    yeah sure, I’ll be in unless I’m out
    don’t knock if the lights are out
    or you hear voices or then
    I might be reading Proust
    if someone slips Proust under my door
    or one of his bones for my stew,
    and I can’t loan money or
    the phone
    or what’s left of my car
    though you can have yesterday’s newspaper
    an old shirt or a bologna sandwich
    or sleep on the couch
    if you don’t scream at night
    and you can talk about yourself
    that’s only normal;
    hard times are upon us all
    only I am not trying to raise a family
    to send through Harvard
    or buy hunting land,
    I am not aiming high
    I am only trying to keep myself alive
    just a little longer,
    so if you sometimes knock
    and I don’t answer
    and there isn’t a woman in here
    maybe I have broken my jaw
    and am looking for wire
    or I am chasing the butterflies in
    my wallpaper,
    I mean if I don’t answer
    I don’t answer, and the reason is
    that I am not yet ready to kill you
    or love you, or even accept you,
    it means I don’t want to talk
    I am busy, I am mad, I am glad
    or maybe I’m stringing up a rope;
    so even if the lights are on
    and you hear sound
    like breathing or praying or singing
    a radio or the roll of dice
    or typing—
    go away, it is not the day
    the night, the hour;
    it is not the ignorance of impoliteness,
    I wish to hurt nothing, not even a bug
    but sometimes I gather evidence of a kind
    that takes some sorting,
    and your blue eyes, be they blue
    and your hair, if you have some
    or your mind—they cannot enter
    until the rope is cut or knotted
    or until I have shaven into
    new mirrors, until the world is
    stopped or opened
                forever.
     

startled into life like fire
     
     
    in grievous deity my cat
    walks around
    he walks around and around
    with
    electric tail and
    push-button
    eyes
     
     
    he is
    alive and
    plush and
    final as a plum tree
     
     
    neither of us understands
    cathedrals or
    the man outside
    watering his
    lawn
     
     
    if I were all the man
    that he is
    cat—
    if there were men
    like this
    the world could
    begin
     
     
    he leaps up on the couch
    and walks through
    porticoes of my
    admiration.
     

stew
     
     
    stew at noon, my dear; and look:
    the ants, the sawdust, the mica
    plants, the shadows of banks like
    bad jokes;
    do you think we’ll hear
    The Bartered Bride today?
    how’s your tooth?
     
     
    I should wash my feet and
    clean my nails
    not that I’d feel more like Christ
    but
    less like a leper—
    which is important when
    poverty is a small game you play
    with your time.
     
     
    let’s see: first the mailman
    then yesterday’s copy of the Times.
    we might
    this way
    get blown up a day too
    late.
     
     
    then there’s the library or
    a walk down the boulevards.
     
     
    many great men have
    walked down the boulevards
    but it’s terrible to be
    a great man
     
     
    like a monkey carrying a 5 pound
    sack of potatoes up a 40 foot hill.
     
     
    Paris can wait.
     
     
    more salt?
     
     
    after we eat
    let’s sleep, let’s sleep.
     
     
    we can’t make any money
    awake.
     

lilies in my brain
     
     
    the lilies storm