Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit Read Online Free PDF Page B

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    they want to suck my blood-
    vibes
     
 
    do I have enough
    clean towels?
     
 
    I told them that I was feeling
    bad
    (I didn’t expect all these
    mothers
    arriving with their tits
    distended)
     
 
    you see
    I am too good
    with the drunken letter
    and the drunken phonecall
    screaming for love
    when I probably don’t
    have it
     
 
    I am going out to buy more
    towels
    bedsheets
    Alka-Seltzer
    washrags
    mop handles
    mops
    swords
    knives
    bombs
    vaseline flowers of yearning
    the works of
    De Sade.
     

maybe tomorrow
     
     
    looked like
     
Bogart
 
    sunken cheeks
     
 
    chain smoker
     
 
    pissed out of windows
    ignored women
     
 
    snarled at landlords
     
 
    rode boxcars through the badlands
     
 
    never missed a chance to duke it
     
 
    full of roominghouse and skidrow stories
     
 
    ribs showing
     
 
    flat belly
     
 
    walking in shoes with nails driving into his heels
     
 
    looking out of windows
     
 
    cigar in mouth
    lips wet with beer
     
Bogart’s
 
    got a beard now
     
 
    he’s much older
     
 
    but don’t believe the gossip:
    Bogie’s not dead
    yet.
     

junk
     
     
    sitting in a dark bedroom with 3 junkies,
    female.
    brown paper bags filled with trash are
    everywhere.
    it is one-thirty in the afternoon.
    they talk about madhouses,
    hospitals.
    they are waiting for a fix.
    none of them work.
    it’s relief and foodstamps and
    Medi-Cal.
     
 
    men are usable objects
    toward the fix.
     
 
    it is one-thirty in the afternoon
    and outside small plants grow.
    their children are still in school.
    the females smoke cigarettes
    and suck listlessly on beer and
    tequila
    which I have purchased.
     
 
    I sit with them.
    I wait on my fix:
    I am a poetry junkie.
     
 
    they pulled Ezra through the streets
    in a wooden cage.
    Blake was sure of God.
    Villon was a mugger.
    Lorca sucked cock.
    T. S. Eliot worked a teller’s cage.
     
 
    most poets are swans,
    egrets.
    I sit with 3 junkies
    at one-thirty in the afternoon.
     
 
    the smoke pisses upward.
     
 
    I wait.
     
 
    death is a nothing jumbo.
     
 
    one of the females says that she likes
    my yellow shirt.
     
 
    I believe in a simple violence.
     
 
    this is
    some of it.
     

8 rooms
     
     
    my dentist is a drunk.
    he rushes into the room while I’m
    having my teeth cleaned:
    “hey, you old fuck! you still
    writing dirty stories?”
    “yes.”
    he looks at the nurse:
    “me and this old fuck, we both used
    to work for the post office down at
    the terminal annex!”
    the nurse doesn’t answer.
    “look at us now! we got out of
    there; we got out of that place,
    didn’t we?”
    “yes, yes…”
    he runs off into another room.
    he hires beautiful young girls,
    they are everywhere.
    they work a 4 day week and he drives
    a yellow Caddy.
    he has 8 rooms besides the waiting
    room, all equipped.
    the nurse presses her body against
    mine, it’s unbelievable
    her breasts, her thighs, her body
    press against me. she picks at my teeth
    and looks into my eyes:
    “am I hurting you?”
    “no no, go ahead!”
     
 
    in 15 minutes the dentist is back:
    “hey, don’t take too long!
    what’s going on, anyhow?”
    “Dr., this man hasn’t had his teeth
    cleaned for 5 years. they’re filthy!”
    “all right, finish him off! give him
    another appointment!”
    he runs out.
    “would you like another appointment?”
    she looks into my eyes.
    “yes,” I tell her.
    she lets her body fall full against mine
    and gives me a few last scrapes.
    the whole thing only costs me forty dollars
    including x-rays.
     
 
    but she never told me her
    name.
     

I liked him
     
     
    I liked D. H. Lawrence
    he could get so indignant
    he snapped and he ripped
    with wonderfully energetic sentences
    he could lay the word down
    bright and writhing
    there was the stink of blood and murder
    and sacrifice about him
    the only tenderness he allowed
    was when he bedded down his large German
    wife.
    I liked D. H. Lawrence—
    he could talk about Christ
    like he was