Burning in Water, Drowing in Flame Read Free

looked exactly alike, we could have been twins
    the old man and I: that’s what they
    said. he had his bulbs on the screen
    ready for planting
    while I was lying with a whore from 3rd street.
     
     
    very well. grant us this moment: standing before a mirror
    in my dead father’s suit
    waiting also
    to die.
     

the day it rained
at the los angeles
county museum
     
     
    the jew bent over and
    died. 99 machine guns
    were shipped to France. somebody won the 3rd race
    while I inspected
    the propeller of an old monoplane
    a man came by with a patch over his eye. it began to
    rain, it rained and it rained and the ambulances ran
    together
    in the streets, and although
    everything was properly dull
    I enjoyed the moment
    like the time in New Orleans
    living on candy bars
    and watching the pigeons
    in a back alley with a French name
    as behind me the river became
    a gulf
    and the clouds moved sickly through
    a sky that had died
    about the time Caesar was knifed,
    and I promised myself then
    that someday I’d remember it
    as it was.
     
     
    a man came by and coughed.
    think it’ll stop raining? he said.
    I didn’t answer. I touched the
    old propeller and listened to the
    ants on the roof rushing over
    the edge of the world, go away, I said,
    go away or I’ll call
    the guard.
     

2 p.m. beer
     
     
    nothing matters
    but flopping on a mattress
    with cheap dreams and a beer
    as the leaves die and the horses die
    and the landladies stare in the halls;
    brisk the music of pulled shades,
    a last man’s cave
    in an eternity of swarm
    and explosion;
    nothing but the dripping sink,
    the empty bottle,
    euphoria,
    youth fenced in,
    stabbed and shaven,
    taught words
    propped up
    to die.
     

hooray say the roses
     
     
    hooray say the roses, today is blamesday
    and we are red as blood.
     
     
    hooray say the roses, today is Wednesday
    and we bloom where soldiers fell,
    and lovers too,
    and the snake ate the word.
     
     
    hooray say the roses, darkness comes
    all at once, like lights gone out,
    the sun leaves dark continents
    and rows of stone.
     
     
    hooray say the roses, cannons and spires,
    birds, bees, bombers, today is Friday
    the hand holding a medal out the window,
    a moth going by, half a mile an hour,
    hooray hooray
    hooray say the roses
    we wave empires on our stems,
    the sun moves the mouth:
    hooray hooray hooray
    and that is why you like us.
     

the sunday artist
     
     
    I have been painting these last two Sundays;
    it’s not much, you’re correct,
    but in this tournament great dreams break:
    history removes her dress and becomes a harlot,
    and I have awakened in the morning
    to see eagles flapping their wings like shades;
    I have met Montaigne and Phidias
    in the flames of my wastebasket,
    I have met barbarians on the streets
    their heads rocking with rodents;
    I have seen wicked infants in blue tubs
    wanting stems as beautiful as flowers,
    and I have seen the barfly sick
    over his last dead penny;
    I have heard Domenico Theotocopoulos
    on nights of frost, cough in his grave;
    and God, no taller than a landlady,
    hair dyed red, has asked me the time;
    I have seen grey grass of lovers in my mirror
    while lighting a cigarette to a maniac’s applause;
    Cadillacs have crawled my walls like roaches,
    goldfish whirl my bowl, hand-tamed tigers;
    yes, I have been painting these Sundays—
    the grey mill, the new rebel; it’s terrible really:
    I must ram my fist through cleanser and chlorine,
    through Andernach and apples and acid,
    but, then, I really should tell you that I have a
    woman around mixing waffle flour and singing,
    and the paint sticks to my plan like candy.
     

old poet
     
     
    I would, of course, prefer to be with the fox in the ferns
    instead of with a photograph of an old Spad in my pocket
    to the sound of the anvil chorus and legs legs legs
    girls kicking high, showing everything but the pisser,
    but I might as well be dead right now
     
     
    everywhere the ill wind blows
    and Keats is dead
    and I am