Burning in Water, Drowing in Flame Read Online Free PDF Page B

with luxury yachts who can sail around
     
     
    the world and yet never get out of their vest
    pockets, men like snails, men like eels, men
    like slugs, and not as good…
     
     
    and nothing. getting your last paycheck
    at a harbor, at a factory, at a hospital, at an
    aircraft plant, at a penny arcade, at a
    barbershop, at a job you didn’t want
    anyway.
    income tax, sickness, servility, broken
    arms, broken heads—all the stuffing
    come out like an old pillow.
     
     
    we have everything and we have nothing.
    some do it well enough for a while and
    then give way. fame gets them or disgust
    or age or lack of proper diet or ink
    across the eyes or children in college
    or new cars or broken backs while skiing
    in Switzerland or new politics or new wives
    or just natural change and decay—
    the man you knew yesterday hooking
    for ten rounds or drinking for three days and
    three nights by the Sawtooth mountains now
    just something under a sheet or a cross
    or a stone or under an easy delusion,
    or packing a bible or a golf bag or a
    briefcase: how they go, how they go!—all
    the ones you thought would never go.
     
     
    days like this. like your day today.
    maybe the rain on the window trying to
    get through to you. what do you see today?
    what is it? where are you? the best
    days are sometimes the first, sometimes
    the middle and even sometimes the last.
    the vacant lots are not bad, churches in
    Europe on postcards are not bad. people in
     
     
    wax museums frozen into their best sterility
    are not bad, horrible but not bad. the
    cannon, think of the cannon. and toast for
    breakfast the coffee hot enough you
    know your tongue is still there. three
    geraniums outside a window, trying to be
    red and trying to be pink and trying to be
    geraniums. no wonder sometimes the women
    cry, no wonder the mules don’t want
    to go up the hill. are you in a hotel room
    in Detroit looking for a cigarette? one more
    good day. a little bit of it. and as
    the nurses come out of the building after
    their shift, having had enough, eight nurses
    with different names and different places
    to go—walking across the lawn, some of them
    want cocoa and a paper, some of them want a
    hot bath, some of them want a man, some
    of them are hardly thinking at all. enough
    and not enough. arcs and pilgrims, oranges
    gutters, ferns, antibodies, boxes of
    tissue paper.
     
     
    in the most decent sometimes sun
    there is the softsmoke feeling from urns
    and the canned sound of old battleplanes
    and if you go inside and run your finger
    along the window ledge you’ll find
    dirt, maybe even earth.
    and if you look out the window
    there will be the day, and as you
    get older you’ll keep looking
    keep looking
    sucking your tongue in a little
    ah ah no no maybe
     
     
    some do it naturally
    some obscenely
    everywhere.
     

sway with me
     
     
    sway with me, everything sad—
    madmen in stone houses
    without doors,
    lepers streaming love and song
    frogs trying to figure
    the sky;
    sway with me, sad things—
    fingers split on a forge
    old age like breakfast shells
    used books, used people
    used flowers, used love
    I need you
    I need you
    I need you:
    it has run away
    like a horse or a dog,
    dead or lost
    or unforgiving.
     

lack of almost everything
     
     
    the essence of the belly
    like a white balloon sacked
    is disturbing
    like the running of feet
    on the stairs
    when you don’t know
    who is there.
    of course, if you turn on the radio
    you might forget
    the fat under your shirt
    or the rats lined up in order
    like old women on Hollywood Blvd
    waiting on a comedy
    show.
    I think of old men
    in four dollar rooms
    looking for socks in dresser drawers
    while standing in brown underwear
    all the time the clock ticking on
    warm as a
    cobra.
    ah, there are some decent things, maybe:
    the sky, the circus
    the legs of ladies getting out of cars,
    the peach coming through the door
    like a Mozart symphony.
    the scale says 198. that’s what
    I weigh. it is 2:10