Love is a Dog from Hell Read Online Free PDF

a
    while.
    then I say goodbye
    but he still follows
    me
    past the beer
    parlours and the
    love parlours…
    “keep me informed ,
    buddy, keep me informed ,
    I want to know what’s
    going on.”
    he’s my new one.
    I’ve never seen him
    talk to anybody
    else.
    the cart rattles
    along a little bit
    behind me
    then something
    falls out.
    he stops to pick
    it up.
    as he does I
    walk through the
    front door of the
    green hotel on the
    corner
    pass down through
    the hall
    come out the back
    door and
    there’s a cat
    shitting there in
    absolute delight,
    he grins at
    me.

Big Max
     
     
    in junior high school
    Big Max was a problem.
    we’d be sitting during lunch hour
    eating our peanut butter sandwiches
    and potato chips.
    he was hairy of nostril
    and of eyebrow, his lips
    glistened with spittle.
    he already wore size ten and a half
    shoes. his shirts stretched across a
    massive chest. his wrists looked like
    two by fours. and he walked up
    through the shadows behind the gym
    where we sat, my friend Eli and I.
    “you guys,” he stood there, “you guys
    sit with your shoulders slumped!
    you walk around with your shoulders
    slumped! how are you ever going to
    make it?”
 
    we didn’t answer.
 
    then Max would look at me.
    “stand up!”
 
    I’d stand up and he’d walk around
    behind me and say, “square your
    shoulders like this!”
 
    and he’d snap my shoulders back.
    “there! doesn’t that feel better ?”
 
    “yeah, Max.”
 
    then he’d walk off and I’d resume a
    normal posture.
    Big Max was ready for the
    world. it made us sick
    to look at him.

trapped
     
     
    in the winter walking on my
    ceiling my eyes the size of streetlamps.
    I have 4 feet like a mouse but
    wash my own underwear—bearded and
    hungover and a hard-on and no lawyer. I
    have a face like a washrag. I sing
    love songs and carry steel.
 
    I would rather die than cry. I can’t
    stand hounds can’t live without them.
    I hang my head against the white
    refrigerator and want to scream like
    the last weeping of life forever but
    I am bigger than the mountains.

it’s the way you play the game
     
     
    call it love
    stand it up in the failing
    light
    put it in a dress
    pray sing beg cry laugh
    turn off the lights
    turn on the radio
    add trimmings:
    butter, raw eggs, yesterday’s
    newspaper;
    one new shoelace, then add
    paprika, sugar, salt, pepper,
    phone your drunken aunt in
    Calexico;
    call it love, you
    skewer it good, add
    cabbage and applesauce,
    then heat it from the
    left side,
    then heat it from the right
    side,
    put it in a box
    give it away
    leave it on a doorstep
    vomiting as you go
    into the
    hydrangea.

on the continent
     
     
    I’m soft. I
    dream too.
    I let myself dream. I dream of
    being famous. I dream of
    walking the streets of London and
    Paris. I dream of
    sitting in cafes
    drinking fine wines and
    taking a taxi back to a good
    hotel.
    I dream of
    meeting beautiful ladies in the hall
    and
    turning them away because
    I have a sonnet in mind that
    I want to write
    before sunrise. at sunrise
    I will be asleep and there will be a
    strange cat curled up on the
    windowsill.
 
    I think we all feel like this
    now and then.
    I’d even like to visit
    Andernach, Germany, the place where
    I began. then I’d like to
    fly on to Moscow to check out
    their mass transit system so
    I’d have something faintly lewd to
    whisper into the ear of the mayor of
    Los Angeles upon my return to this
    fucking place.
 
    it could happen.
    I’m ready.
    I’ve watched snails climb over
    ten foot walls and
    vanish.
 
    you mustn’t confuse this with
    ambition.
    I would be able to laugh at my
    good turn of the cards—
 
    and I won’t forget you.
    I’ll send postcards and
    snapshots, and the
    finished sonnet.

12:18 a.m .
     
     
    beheaded in the middle of the
    night
    scratching my sides
    I am covered with bites
    kick my white legs out of the sheets
    as the sirens scream
    there is a gun blast.
 
    I go to the kitchen
    for a glass of