The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills Read Free Page A

brain.
     

ants crawl my drunken arms
     
     
    O ants crawl my drunken arms
    and they let Van Gogh sit in a cornfield
    and take Life out of the world with a
    shotgun,
    ants crawl my drunken arms
    and they set Rimbaud
    to running guns and looking under rocks
    for gold,
    O ants crawl my drunken arms,
    they put Pound in a nuthouse
    and made Crane jump into the sea
    in his pajamas,
    ants, ants crawl my drunken arms
    as our schoolboys scream for Willie Mays
    instead of Bach,
    ants crawl my drunken arms
    through the drink I reach
    for surfboards and sinks, for sunflowers
    and the typewriter falls like a heart-attack
    from the table
    or a dead Sunday bull,
    and the ants crawl into my mouth
    and down my throat,
    I wash them down with wine
    and pull up the shades
    and they are on the screen
    and on the streets
    climbing church towers
    and into tire casings
    looking for something else
    to eat.
     

a literary discussion
     
     
    Markov claims I am trying
    to stab his soul
    but I’d prefer his wife.
     
 
    I put my feet on the coffee table
    and he says,
    I don’t mind you putting
    your feet on the coffee table
    except that the legs are wobbly
    and the thing
    will fall apart
    any minute.
     
 
    I leave my feet on the table
    but I’d prefer his wife.
     
 
    I would rather, says Markov,
    entertain a ditch-digger
    or a newsvendor
    because they are kind enough
    to observe the decencies
    even though
    they don’t know
    Rimbaud from rat poison.
     
 
    my empty beercan
    rolls to the floor.
     
 
    that I must die
    bothers me less than
    a straw, says Markov,
    my part of the game
    is that I must live
    the best I can.
     
 
    I grab his wife as she walks by,
    and then her can is against my belly,
    and she has fine knees and breasts
    and I kiss her.
     
 
    it is not so bad, being old, he says,
    a calmness sets in, but here’s the catch:
    to keep calmness and deadness
    separate; never to look upon youth
    as inferior because you are old,
    never to look upon age as wisdom
    because you have experience. a
    man can be old and a fool—
    many are, a man can be young
    and wise—few are. a—
     
 
    for Christ’s all sake, I wailed,
    shut up!
     
 
    he walked over and got his cane and
    walked out.
     
 
    you’ve hurt his feelings, she said,
    he thinks you are a great poet.
     
 
    he’s too slick for me, I said,
    he’s too wise.
     
 
    I had one of her breasts out.
    it was a monstrous
    beautiful
    thing.
     

watermelon
     
     
    and the windows opened that night,
    a ceiling dripped the sweat
    of a tin god,
    and I sat eating a watermelon,
    all false red,
    water like slow running of rusty
    tears,
    and I spit out seeds
    and swallowed seeds,
    and I kept thinking
    I am a fool
    I am a fool
    to eat this watermelon,
    but I kept eating
    anyhow.
     

for one I knew
     
     
    Of all the iron beds in paradise
    yours was the most cruel
    and I was smoke in your mirror
    and you sluiced your hair with jade,
    but you were a woman and I was a
    boy, but boy enough for an iron bed
    and man enough for wine
    and you.
     
 
    now I am a man,
    man enough for all,
    and you are, you
    are
    old
     
 
    not now so cruel,
     
 
    now your iron bed
    is empty.
     

when Hugo Wolf went mad–
     
     
    Hugo Wolf went mad while eating an onion
    and writing his 253rd song; it was rainy
    April and the worms came out of the ground
    humming Tannhäuser, and he spilled his milk
    with his ink, and his blood fell out to the walls
    and he howled and he roared and he screamed, and
    downstairs
    his landlady said, I knew it, that rotten son
    of a
    bitch has dummied up his brain, he’s jacked-off
    his last piece
    of music and now I’ll never get the rent, and someday
    he’ll be famous
    and they’ll bury him in the rain, but right now
    I wish he’d shut
    up that god damned screaming—for my money he’s
    a silly pansy jackass
    and when they move him out of here, I hope they
    move in a good solid fisherman
    or a hangman
    or a seller of
    Biblical tracts.
     

riot
     
     
    the reason