in my dead father’s suit
waiting also
to die.
to the whore who took my poems (#ulink_e289318a-d338-5c0c-97df-382f7427823e)
some say we should keep personal remorse from the
poem,
stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,
but jezus:
12 poems gone and I don’t keep carbons and you have
my
paintings too, my best ones; it’s stifling:
are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them?
why didn’t you take my money? they usually do
from the sleeping drunken pants sick in the corner.
next time take my left arm or a fifty
but not my poems:
I’m not Shakespeare
but sometimes simply
there won’t be any more, abstract or otherwise;
there’ll always be money and whores and drunkards
down to the last bomb,
but as God said,
crossing his legs,
I see where I have made plenty of poets
but not so very much
poetry.
the loser (#ulink_727c1a29-0911-5b23-ad2f-58cf06013c16)
and the next I remembered I’m on a table,
everybody’s gone: the head of bravery
under light, scowling, flailing me down . . .
and then some toad stood there, smoking a cigar:
“Kid, you’re no fighter,” he told me,
and I got up and knocked him over a chair;
it was like a scene in a movie, and
he stayed there on his big rump and said
over and over: “Jesus, Jesus, whatsamatta wit
you?” and I got up and dressed,
the tape still on my hands, and when I got home
I tore the tape off my hands and
wrote my first poem,
and I’ve been fighting
ever since.
the best way to get famous is to run away (#ulink_07d6f08c-4d65-5f08-82a8-62bb2bfd4c99)
I found a loose cement slab outside the ice-cream store,
tossed it aside and began to dig; the earth was
soft and full of worms and soon I was in to my
waist, size 36;
a crowd gathered but stepped back before my shots
of mud,
and by the time the police came, I was in below