4 Hour Hard On

From the book, Ultramarine,
published by Vintage Books
(c) '86, by Raymond Carver
All Rights Reserved





SPELL

Between five and seven this evening,
I lay in the channel of sleep. Attached
to this world by nothing more than hope,
I turned in a current of dark dreams.
It was during this time the weather
underwent a metamorphosis.
Became deranged. What before had been
vile and shabby, but comprehensible,
became swollen and
unrecognizable. Something utterly vicious.

In my despairing mood, I didn’t
need it. It was the last thing on earth
I wanted. So with all the power I could muster,
I sent it packing. Sent it down the coast
to a big river I know about. A river
able to deal with foul weather
like this. So what if the river likes to flee
to higher ground? Give it a few days.
It’ll find its way.

Then all will be as before. I swear
this won’t be more than a bad memory, if that.
Why, this time next week I won’t remember
what I was feeling when I wrote this.
I’ll have forgotten I slept badly
and dreamed for a time this evening…
To wake at seven o’ clock, look out
at the storm and, after that first shock—
take heart. Think long and hard
about what I want, what I could let go
or send away. And then do it!
Like that. With words, and signs.





THE COBWEB

A few minutes ago, I stepped onto the deck
of the house. From there I could see and hear the water,
and everything that’s happened to me all these years.
It was hot and still. The tide was out.
No birds sang. As I leaned against the railing
a cobweb touched my forehead.
It caught in my hair. No one can blame me that I turned
and went inside. There was no wind. The sea
was dead calm. I hung the cobweb from the lampshade.
Where I watch it shudder now and then when my breath
touches it. A fine thread. Intricate.
Before long, before anyone realizes,
I’ll be gone from here.





WHERE THEY’D LIVED

Everywhere he went that day he walked
in his own past. Kicked through piles
of memories. Looked through windows
that no longer belonged to him.
Work and poverty and short change.
In those days they’d lived by their wills,
determined to be invincible.
Nothing could stop them. Not
for the longest while.

In the motel room
that night, in the early morning hours,
he opened a curtain. Saw clouds
banked against the moon. He leaned
closer to the glass. Cold air passed
through and put its hand over his heart.
I loved you, he thought.
Loved you well.
Before loving you no longer.





NYQUIL

Call it iron discipline. But for months
I never took my first drink
before eleven p.m. Not so bad,
considering. This was in the beginning
phase of things. I knew a man
whose drink of choice was Listerine.
He was coming down off Scotch.
He bought Listerine by the case,
and drank it by the case. The back seat
of his car was piled high with dead soldiers.
Those empty bottles of Listerine
gleaming in his scalding back seat!
The sight of it sent me home soul-searching.
I did that once or twice. Everybody does.
Go way down deep inside and look around.
I spent hours there, but
didn’t meet anyone, or see anything
of interest. I came back to the here and now,
and put on my slippers. Fixed
myself a nice glass of NyQuil.
Dragged a chair over to the window.
Where I watched a pale moon struggle to rise
over Cupertino, California.
I waited through hours of darkness with NyQuil.
And then, sweet Jesus! the first sliver
of light.





THE AUTOPSY ROOM

Then I was young and had the strength of ten.
For anything, I thought. Though part of my job
at night was to clean the autopsy room
once the coroner’s work was done. But now
and then they knocked off early, or too late.
For, so help me, they left things out
on their specially built table. A little baby,
still as a stone and snow cold. Another time,
a huge black man with white hair whose chest
had been laid open. All his vital organs
lay in a pan beside his head. The hose
was running, the overhead lights blazed.
And one time there was a leg, a woman’s leg,
on the table. A pale and shapely leg.
I knew it for what it was. I’d seen them before.
Still, it took my breath away.

When I went home at night my wife would say,
“Sugar, it’s going to be all right. We’ll trade
this life in for another.” But it wasn’t
that easy. She’d take my hand between her hands
and hold it tight, while I leaned back on the sofa
and closed my eyes. Thinking of… something.
I don’t know what. But I’d let her bring
my hand to her breast. At which point
I’d open my eyes and stare at the ceiling, or else
the floor. Then my fingers strayed to her leg.
Which was warm and shapely, ready to tremble
and raise slightly, at the slightest touch.
But my mind was unclear and shaky. Nothing
was happening. Everything was happening. Life
was a stone, grinding and sharpening.





SHIFTLESS

The people who were better than us were “comfortable.”
They lived in painted houses with flush toilets.
Drove cars whose year and make were recognizable.
The ones worse off were “sorry” and didn’t work.
Their strange cars sat on blocks in dusty yards.
The years go by and everything and everyone
gets replaced. But this much is still true—
I never liked work. My goal was always
to be shiftless. I saw the merit in that.
I liked the idea of sitting in a chair
in front of your house for hours, doing nothing
but wearing a hat and drinking cola.
What’s wrong with that?
Drawing on a cigarette from time to time.
Spitting. Making things out of wood with a knife.
Where’s the harm there? Now and then calling
the dogs to hunt rabbits. Try it sometime.
Once in a while hailing a fat, blond kid like me
and saying, “Don’t I know you?”
not, “What are you going to be when you grow up?”





IN THE LOBBY OF THE HOTEL DEL MAYO

The girl in the lobby reading a leather-bound book.
The man in the lobby using a broom.
The boy in the lobby watering plants.
The desk clerk looking at his nails.
The woman in the lobby writing a letter.
The old man in the lobby sleeping in his chair.
The fan in the lobby revolving slowly overhead.
Another hot Sunday afternoon.

Suddenly, the girl lays her finger between the pages of
her book.
The man leans on his broom and looks.
The boy stops in his tracks.
The desk clerk raises his eyes and stares.
The woman quits writing.
The old man stirs and wakes up.
What is it?

Someone is running up from the harbor.
Someone who has the sun behind him.
Someone who is bare-chested.
Waving his arms.

It’s clear something terrible has happened.
The man is running straight for the hotel.
His lips are working themselves into a scream.

Everyone in the lobby will recall their terror.
Everyone will remember this moment for the rest of
their lives.

THREE POEMS BY TOMAS TRANSTROMER
Translations by Robert Bly
All works (c) by Tomas Transtromer


After A Death

Once there was a shock
that left behind a long, shimmering comet tail.
It keeps us inside. It makes the TV pictures snowy.
It settles in cold drops on the telephone wires.

One can still go slowly on skis in the winter sun
through brush where a few leaves hang on.
They resemble pages torn from old telephone directories.
Names swallowed by the cold.

It is still beautiful to hear the heart beat
but often the shadow seems more real than the body.
The samurai looks insignificant
beside his armor of black dragon scales.


Breathing Space July

The man who lies on his back under huge trees
is also up in them. He branches out into thousands
of tiny branches.He sways back and forth,
he sits in a catapult chair that hurtles forward
in slow motion.

The man who stands down at the dock
screws up his eyes against the water.
Docks get older faster than men.
They have silver-gray posts and boulders
in their gut. The dazzling light drives straight in.

The man who spends the whole day in an open boat
moving over the luminous bays
will fall asleep at last inside the shade
of his blue lamp
as the islands crawl like huge moths
over the globe.


The Name

I got sleepy while driving and pulled in
under a tree at he side of the road. How long? Hours.
Darkness had come.

All of a sudden I was awake, and didn't know who I was.
I'm fully conscious, but that doesn't help. Where am I?
WHO am I? I am something that has just woken up
in a back seat, throwing itself around in panic
like a cat in a gunnysack. Who am I?

After a long while my life
comes back to me. My name comes back to me like
an angel. Outside the castle walls there is
a trumpet blast (as in the Leonora Overture) and the
footsteps that will save me come quickly quickly down the
long staircase. It's me coming! It's me!

But it is impossible to forget the fifteen-second battle
in the hell of nothingness, a few feet from a major
highway where the cars slip past with
their lights on.

WHAT WORK IS
(c) by Phillip Levine,
all rights reserved


We stand in the rain in a long line
waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.
You know what work is—if you’re
old enough to read this you know what
work is, although you may not do it.
Forget you. This is about waiting,
shifting from one foot to another.
Feeling the light rain falling like mist
into your hair, blurring your vision
until you think you see your own brother
ahead of you, maybe ten places.
You rub your glasses with your fingers,
and of course it’s someone else’s brother,
narrower across the shoulders than
yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin
that does not hide the stubbornness,
the sad refusal to give in to
rain, to the hours wasted waiting,
to the knowledge that somewhere ahead
a man is waiting who will say “No,
we’re not hiring today,” for any
reason he wants. You love your brother,
now suddenly you can hardly stand
the love flooding you for your brother,
who’s not beside you or behind or
ahead because he’s home trying to
sleep off a miserable night shift
at Cadillac so he can get up
before noon to study his German.
Works eight hours a night so he can sing
Wagner, the opera you hate most,
the worst music ever invented.
How long has it been since you told him
you loved him, held his wide shoulders,
opened your eyes wide and said those words,
and maybe kissed his cheek? You’ve never
done something so simple, so obvious,
not because you’re too young, or too dumb,
not because you’re jealous or even mean
or incapable of crying in
the presence of another man, no,
just because you don’t know what work is.

From The Morrow Anthology Of Younger American Poets,
Published by Quill, (c) 1985 ; Jon Anderson
All Rights Reserved


THE SECRET OF POETRY

When I was lonely, I thought of death.
When I thought of death I was lonely.

I suppose this error will continue.
I shall enter each gray morning

Delighted by frost, which is death,
& the trees that stand alone in mist.

When I met my wife I was lonely.
Our child in her body is lonely.

I suppose this error will go on & on.
Morning I kiss my wife's cold lips,

Nights her body, dripping with mist.
This is the error that fascinates.

I suppose you are secretly lonely,
Thinking of death, thinking of love.

I'd like, please, to leave on your sill
Just one cold flower, whose beauty

Would leave you inconsolable all day.
The secret of poetry is cruelty.

NO SORRY
(c) 2006, by Catherine Bowman
All Rights Reserved

Do you have any scissors I could borrow?
No, I'm sorry I don't.
What about a knife? You got any knives? A good paring knife would do or a simple butcher knife or maybe a cleaver?
No, sorry all I have is this old bread knife my grandfather used to butter his bread with every morning.
Well then, how about a hand drill or hammer, a bike chain, or some barbed wire? You got any rusty razor-edged barbed wire? You got a chain saw?
No, sorry I don't.
Well then maybe you might have some sticks?
I'm sorry I don't have any sticks.
How about some stones?
No, I don't have any sticks or stones.
Well, how about a stone tied to a stick.
You mean a club?
Yeah, a club. You got a club?
No, sorry, I don't have any clubs.
What about some fighting picks, war axes, military forks, or tomahawks?
No, sorry I don't have any kind of war fork, axe or tomahawk.
What about a morning star?
A morning star?
Yeah, you know, those spiked ball and chains they sell for riot control.
No, nothing like that. Sorry.
Now, I know you said you don't have a knife except for that dull old thing your grandfather used to butter his bread with every morning and he passed down to you but I thought maybe you just might have an Australian dagger with a quartz blade and a wood handle, or a bone dagger, or a Bowie, you know, it doesn't hurt to ask? Or perhaps one of those lethal multipurpose stilettos?
No, sorry.
Or maybe you have a simple blow pipe? Or a complex airgun?
No, I don't have a simple blow pipe, or complex airgun.
Well then maybe you have a jungle carbine, a Colt, a revolver, a Ruger, an axis bolt-action repeating rifle with telescopic sight for sniping. A sawed-off shotgun? Or better yet, a gas-operated self-loading fully automatic assault weapon?
No, sorry I don't.
How about a hand grenade?
No.
How about a tank?
No.
Shrapnel?
No.
Napalm?
No.
Napalm 2?
No, sorry I don't.
Let me ask you this. Do you have any intercontinental ballistic missiles? Or submarine-launched cruise missiles? Or multiple independently targeted reentry missiles? Or terminally guided anti-tank shells or projectiles? Let me ask you this. Do you have any fission bombs or hydrogen bombs? Do you have any thermonuclear warheads? Got any electronic measures or electronic counter-measures or electronic counter-counter measures? Got any biological weapons or germ warfare, preferably in aerosol form? Got any enhanced tactical neutron lasers emitting massive doses of whole-body gamma radiation? Wait a minute. Got any plutonium? Got any chemical agents, nerve agents, blister agents, you know, like mustard gas, any choking agents or incapacitating agents or toxin agents?
Well I'm not sure. What do they look like?
Liquid vapor powder colorless gas. Invisible.
I'm not sure. What do they smell like?
They smell like fruit, garlic, fish or soap, new-mown hay, apple blossoms, or like those little green peppers that your grandfather probably would tend to in his garden every morning after he buttered his bread with that old bread knife that he passed down to you.



Catherine Bowman's poems have appeared in four editions of the Best American Poetry Series, and in many publications such as TriQuarterly, River Styx, The Kenyon Review, the Los Angeles Times, and the Paris Review.

THREE POEMS BY WILLIAM STAFFORD
(c) 2007, William Stafford
All Rights Reserved



Things I Learned Last Week

Ants, when they meet each other,
usually pass on the right.

Sometimes you can open a sticky
door with your elbow.

A man in Boston has dedicated himself
to telling about injustice.
For three thousand dollars he will
come to your town and tell you about it.

Schopenhauer was a pessimist but
he played the flute.

Yeats, Pound, and Eliot saw art as
growing from other art. They studied that.

If I ever die, I’d like it to be
in the evening. That way, I’ll have
all the dark to go with me, and no one
will see how I begin to hobble along.

In the Pentagon one person’s job is to
take pins out of towns, hills, and fields,
and then save the pins for later.



1940

It is August. Your father is walking you
to the train for camp and then the War
and on out of his life, but you don’t know.

Little lights along the path glow under their
hoods
and your shoes go brown, brown in the
brightness
till the next interval, when they disappear in the
shadow.

You know they are down there, by the crunch of
stone
and a rustle when they touch a fern. Somewhere
above,
cicadas arch their gauze of sound all over town.

Shivers of summer wind follow across the park
and then turn back. You walk on toward
September, the depot, the dark, the light, the
dark.



Meditation

Animals full of light
walk through the forest
toward someone aiming a gun
loaded with darkness.

That’s the world: God
holding still
letting it happen again,
and again and again.

You could stalk Mr. Simic's art
for an infinitude of lifetimes, & never
apprehend the beautiful secret which
is his Muse.


From the book,
Walking The Black Cat
published by Harcourt Brace--

(c) 1996
by Charles Simic
All Rights Reserved



THE MASTER OF CEREMONIES

He’s shouting again from the rooftop
And pointing,
Pointing and bowing down from the waist
As he introduces the evening performance:

The baby in the crib is playing with his father’s
Black sock, pulling it over his head.
In another window,
A woman with a stem of a red rose between her teeth
Has got hold of a tiger by its tail
And for some reason won’t let it go.

And now for a bit of snow.

All those normally incapable of happiness
Are catching flakes on their eyelids,
On their tongues
As they run amuck in the street.

Pastry chef, I believe, you’re next.



GHOSTS

It’s Mr. Brown looking much better
Than he did in the morgue.
He’s brought me a huge carp
In a bloodstained newspaper.
What an odd visit.
I haven’t thought of him in years.

Linda is with him and so is Sue.
Two pale and elegant fading memories
Holding each other by the hand.
Even their lipstick is fresh
Despite all the scientific proofs
To the contrary.

Is Linda going to cook the fish?
She turns and gazes in the direction
Of the kitchen while Sue
Continues to watch me mournfully.
I don’t believe any of it,
And still I’m scared stiff.

I know of no way to respond,
So I do nothing.
The windows are open. The air’s thick
With the scent of magnolias.
Drops of evening rain are dripping
From the dark and heavy leaves.
I take a deep breath; I close my eyes.

Dear specters, I don’t even believe
You are here, so how is it
You’re making me comprehend
Things I would rather not know just yet?

It’s the way you stare past me
At what must already be my own ghost,
Before taking your leave,
As unexpectedly as you came in,
Without one of us breaking the silence.



LITTLE UNWRITTEN BOOK

Rocky was a regular guy, a loyal friend.
The trouble was he was only a cat.
Let’s practice, he’d say, and he’d pounce
On his shadow on the wall.
I have to admit, I didn’t learn a thing.
I often sat watching him sleep.
If the birds tried to have a bit of fun in the yard,
He opened one eye.
I even commended him for good behavior.

He was black except for the white gloves he wore.
He played the piano in the parlor
By walking over its keys back and forth.
With exquisite tact he chewed my ear
If I wouldn’t get up from my chair.
Then one day he vanished. I called.
I poked in the bushes.
I walked far into the woods.

The mornings were the hardest. I’d put out
A saucer of milk at the back door.
Peekaboo, a bird called out. She knew.
At one time we had ten farmhands working for us.
I’d make a megaphone with my hands and call.
I still do, though it’s been years.
Rocky, I cry!
And now the bird is silent too.



ROACH MOTEL

The fears of my mother,
And I their projectionist
Cranking the projector.

An evening of noir films.
The electric chair is in it,
And so are the cops.
I’m smoking a cheap cigar,
Playing poker with a scar-faced killer
And a fat woman with a husky voice.
She drinks gin out of a bottle,
Sways her hips to the radio,
Has wedding plans.
At daybreak, a web of twisting shadows
Cast by a ceiling fan.
I have holes in my socks,
An asthmatic wheeze
When I kneel down to pray.

I also have a long tail
And look like a monkey
Because I keep lying all the time.



HOT NIGHT

Long haired Jesus,
Arms outstretched,
Reeling,
In an open yellow convertible
As he flies down
Santa Monica Boulevard

Magdalene driving with shades on.
Tires screaming.
A dwarf with a monkey
Stepped out of a cab.
White hotels, green traffic lights,
Palm trees swaying darkly.

That and nothing else.
Been here and gone.
The scent of the sea.
The palm trees converging
And parting up ahead.



EMILY’S THEME

My dear trees, I no longer recognize you
In that wintry light.
You brought me a reminder I can do without:
The world is old, it was always old,
There’s nothing new in it this afternoon.
The garden could have been a padlocked window
Of a pawnshop I was studying
With every item in it dust-covered.

Each one of my thoughts was being ghostwritten
By anonymous authors. Each time they hit
A cobwebbed typewriter key, I shudder.
Luckily, dark came quickly today.
Soon the neighbors were burning leaves,
And perhaps a few other things too.
Later, I saw the children run around the fire,
Their faces demonic in its flames.

FOR THE STRANGER
(c) ’82 by Carolyn Forche
All Rights Reserved

Although you mention Venice
keeping it on your tongue like a fruit pit
and I say yes, perhaps Bucharest, neither of us
really knows. There is only this train
slipping through pastures of snow,
a sleigh reaching down
to touch its buried runners.
We meet on the shaking platform,
the wind’s broken teeth sinking into us.
You unwrap your dark bread
and share with me the coffee
sloshing into your gloves.
Telegraph posts chop the winter fields
into white blocks, in each window
the crude painting of a small farm.
We listen to mothers scolding
children in English as if
we do not understand a word of it—

sit still, sit still.

There are few clues as to where
we are: the baled wheat scattered
everywhere like missing coffins.
The distant yellow kitchen lights
wiped with oil.
Everywhere the black dipping wires
stretching messages from one side
of a country to another.
The men who stand on every border
waving to us.

Wiping ovals of breath from the windows
in order to see ourselves, you touch
the glass tenderly wherever it holds my face.
Days later, you are showing me
photographs of a woman and children
smiling from the windows of your wallet.

Each time the train slows, a man
with our faces in the gold buttons
of his coat passes through the cars
muttering the name of a city. Each time
we lose people. Each time I find you
again between the cars, holding out
a scrap of bread for me, something
hot to drink, until there are
no more cities and you pull me
toward you, sliding your hands
into my coat, telling me
your name over and over, hurrying
your mouth into mine.
We have, each of us, nothing.
We will give it to each other.

From the book, "Fires",
published in '84 by
Vintage Contemporaries,
a Division of Random House



You Don't Know What Love Is
(an evening with Charles Bukowski)
(c) by Raymond Carver;
all rights reserved

You don't know what love is Bukowski said
I’m 51 years old look at me
I’m in love with this young broad
I got it bad but she’s hung up too
so it’s all right man that’s the way it should be
I get in their blood and they can’t get me out
They try everything to get away from me
but they all come back in the end
They all came back to me except
the one I planted
I cried over that one
But I cried easy in those days
Don’t get me onto the hard stuff man
I get mean then
I could sit here and drink beer
with you hippies all night
I could drink ten quarts of this beer
and nothing it’s like water
But let me get onto the hard stuff
and I’ll start throwing people out windows
I’ll throw anybody out the window
I’ve done it
But you don’t know what love is
You don’t know because you’ve never
been in love it’s that simple
I got this young broad see she’s beautiful
She calls me Bukowski
Bukowski she says in this little voice
and I say What
But you don’t know what love is
I’m telling you what it is
but you aren’t listening

There isn’t one of you in this room
would recognize love if it stepped up
and buggered you in the ass
I used to think poetry readings were a copout
Look I’m 51 years old and I’ve been around
I know they’re a copout
But I said to myself Bukowski
starving is even more of a copout
So there you are and nothing
is like it should be
That fellow what’s his name Galway
Kinnell I saw his picture in a magazine
He has a handsome mug on him but he’s a
teacher
Christ can you imagine
but then you’re teachers too
Here I am insulting you already
No I haven’t heard of him
or him either
They’re all termites
Maybe it’s ego I don’t read much anymore
But these people who build
reputations on five or six books
Termites
Bukowski she says
Why do you listen to classical music all day
Can’t you hear her saying that
Bukowski why do you listen to classical music all day
That surprises you doesn’t it
You wouldn’t think a crude bastard like me
could listen to classical music all day
Brahms Rachmaninoff Bartok Telemann

Shit I couldn’t write up here
Too quiet up here too many trees
I like the city that’s the place for me
I put on my classical music each morning
and sit down in front of my typewriter
I light a cigar and I smoke it like this see
and I say Bukowski you’re a lucky man
Bukowski you’ve gone through it all
and you’re a lucky man
And the blue smoke drifts across the table
and I look out the window onto Delongpre Avenue
and I see people walking up and down the sidewalk
and I puff on the cigar like this
And then I lay the cigar into the ashtray like this
and I take a deep breath
and I begin to write
Bukowski this is the life I say
It’s good to be poor it’s good to have hemorrhoids
It’s good to be in love
But you don’t know what it’s like
You don’t know what it’s like to be in love
If you could see her you’d know what I mean
She thought I’d come up here and get laid
She just knew it
Shit I’m 51 years old and she’s 25
and we’re in love and she’s jealous
Jesus it’s beautiful
She said she’d claw my eyes out if I came up here
and got laid
Now that’s love for you
What do any of you know about it
Let me tell you something
I’ve met men in jail who had more style
than the people who hang around colleges
and go to poetry readings
They’re bloodsuckers who come to see
if the poet’s socks are dirty
or if he smells under the arms
Believe me I won’t disappoint em
But I want you to remember this
There’s only one poet in this room tonight
Only one poet in this town tonight
Maybe only one real
poet in this country tonight
and that’s me

What do any of you know about life
What do any of you know about anything
Which of you here has been fired from a job
Or else has beaten up your broad
or else has been
beaten up by your broad
I was fired from Sears and Roebuck five times
They’d fire me and then hire me back again
I was a stockboy for them when I was 35
and then got canned for stealing cookies
I know what it’s like I’ve been there
I’m 51 years old now and I’m in love
This little broad she says
I think you’re full of shit
and I say baby you understand me
She’s the only broad in the world
man or woman
I’d take that from
But you don’t know what love is
They all came back to me in the end too
Every one of em came back
except that one I told you about
the one I planted
We were together seven years
We used to drink a lot
I see a couple of typers in this room but
I don’t see any poets
I’m not surprised
You have to have been in love to write poetry
and you don’t know what it is to be in love
That’s your trouble
Give me some of that stuff
That’s right no ice good
that’s good that’s just fine
So let’s get this show on the road
I know what I said but I’ll have just one
That tastes good
Okay then let’s go let’s get this over with
Only afterwards don’t anyone stand close
to an open window

LIKE A SCARF
(c) 94 by James Tate

The directions to the lunatic asylum were confusing;
most likely they were the random associations
and confused ramblings of a lunatic.
We arrived three hours late for lunch
and the lunatics were stacked up on their shelves,
quite neatly, I might add, giving credit where
credit is due. The orderlies were clearly very
orderly, and they should receive all the
credit that is their due.
When I asked one of the doctors for a corkscrew
he produced one without a moment's hesitation.
And it was a corkscrew of the finest craftsmanship,
very shiny and bright and not unlike the doctor himself.
"We'll be conducting our picnic under the great oak
beginning in just a few minutes, and if you'd care
to join us we'd be most honored. However, I
understand you have your obligations and
responsibilities, and if you'd prefer to simply
visit with us from time to time, between patients,
our invitation is nothing if not flexible.
And we shan't be the least slighted
or offended in any way if, due to your heavy load,
we are altogether deprived of the pleasure
of exchanging a few anecdotes, regarding the
mentally ill, deprived, diseased, the purely knavish,
you in your bughouse, if you'll pardon
my vernacular, O yes, and we in our crackbrain
daily rounds, there are so many
gone potty everywhere we roam,
not to mention in one's own home, dead moonstruck.
Well, well indeed we would have many notes to compare
if you could find the time to join us after your injections."
My invitation was spoken in the evenest tones,
but midway through it I began to suspect I was addressing
an impostor. I returned his corkscrew in a
non-threatening manner, what for instance I
asked myself, would a doctor, a doctor of the
mind,
be doing with a corkscrew in his pocket?
This was a very sick man, one might even say dangerous.
I began moving away cautiously, never
taking my eyes off of him.
His right eyelid was twitching guiltily, or at least
anxiously, and his smock flapping slightly in the wind.
Several members of our party were mingling with the nurses
down by the duck pond, and my grip on the situation
was loosening, the planks in my picnic platform
were rotting.
I was thinking about the potato salad
in an unstable environment.
A weeping spell was about to overtake me.
I was very close to howling and gnashing the gladioli.
I noticed the great calm of the clouds overhead.
And below, several nurses appeared to me in
need of nursing.
The psychopaths were stirring from their naps,
I should say, their post-prandial slumbers.
They were lumbering through the pines
like inordinately sad moose.
Who could eat liverwurst at a time like this?
But, then again, what's a picnic without pathos?
Lacking a way home, I adjusted the flap
in my head and duck-walked
around in circles, quacking, quacking like a scarf.
Inside the belly of that image I began
recycling like a sorry whim, sincerest regrets
are always best.

From the book, Flowers For Hitler
McClelland & Stewart © 1964
All Rights Reserved



WHAT I’M DOING HERE

I do not know if the world has lied
I have lied
I do not know if the world has conspired against love
I have conspired against love
The atmosphere of torture is no comfort
I have tortured
Even without the mushroom cloud
still I would have hated
Listen
I would have done the same things
even if there were no death
I will not be held like a drunkard
under the cold tap of facts
I refuse the universal alibi

Like an empty telephone booth passed at night
and remembered
like mirrors in a movie palace lobby consulted
only on the way out
like a nymphomaniac who binds a thousand
into strange brotherhood
I wait
for each one of you to confess