The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills Read Online Free PDF Page B

better, he looked calmer,
    and you could see him off to the side,
    after most races, shoving bills into his wallet,
    and Jeanette, one of the better hustlers, said,
    “I’d start him off with a blow-job and then twist
    his nuts until he told me how he did it…”
    “Would you do that to me, baby?” I asked.
    “With your method of play you’re lucky to have
    admission,” she said downing a drink that had cost me
    85¢. “Do you still have a collection of Mozart?”
    I asked her. “What’s that got to do with it?” she asked.
    I walked off.
     
 
    I read about it in the papers next day. Witnesses
    said there were 3 of them and a woman at the wheel.
    I saw Jeanette at the bar. “Hello, Mozart,” she said.
    She looked a little nervous and at the same time she
    seemed to feel pretty good. “I’ll take a double
    shot right now,” I said. “And after the next race,
    I think I’ll have a vodka. I’m going to mix them all day.
    Haven’t
    been real drunk in a couple of years.”
     
 
    She watched me lighting a cigarette, then I told her, “Also, I
    want a pack of smokes, and you are going home with me tonight and
    we are going to listen to Mozart all night. You are going to
    like it. You are going to have to like it.”
     
 
    She paid for the drink. “You’re looking for trouble,” she told
    me. “Bitch,” I said, “I have been trying to commit suicide for
    years.”
    I had a good day. We went home and listened to Mozart for hours.
    She was as good as ever on the springs. Only this time there was
    no charge. Then she cried half the night and said she loved me.
    I knew what that was for.
     
 
    The next afternoon at the track I didn’t speak to her, and I won
    one hundred and twelve dollars, not counting drinks and admission,
    and I kept looking back through the rearview window as I drove,
    bigtime, and then I began to laugh, shit, they knew I was nothing,
    I was safe; I should tell the screws but when a man is dead
    the screws can’t bring him back.
     
 
    I got home and opened a fifth of scotch, tired of Mozart
    I tried The Rake’s Progress by Strav.
    I read the Racing Form for about 30 minutes, put in a long distance
    call to some woman in Sacramento, drank a little more and went to
    bed, alone, about 11:30.
     

sleeping woman
     
     
    I sit up in bed at night and listen to you
    snore
    I met you in a bus station
    and now I wonder at your back
    sick white and stained with
    children’s freckles
    as the lamp divests the unsolvable
    sorrow of the world
    upon your sleep.
     
 
    I cannot see your feet
    but I must guess that they are
    most charming feet.
     
 
    who do you belong to?
    are you real?
    I think of flowers, animals, birds
    they all seem more than good
    and so clearly
    real.
     
 
    yet you cannot help being a
    woman. we are each selected to be
    something. the spider, the cook.
    the elephant. it is as if we were each
    a painting and hung on some
    gallery wall.
     
 
    —and now the painting turns
    upon its back, and over a curving elbow
    I can see ½ a mouth, one eye and
    almost a nose.
    the rest of you is hidden
    out of sight
    but I know that you are a
    contemporary, a modern living
    work
    perhaps not immortal
    but we have
    loved.
     
 
    please continue to
    snore.
     

when you wait for the dawn to crawl through the screen like a burglar to take your life away—
     
     
    the snake had crawled the hole,
    and she said,
    tell me about
    yourself.
     
 
    and
    I said,
    I was beaten down
    long ago
    in some alley
    in another
    world.
     
 
    and she said,
    we’re all
    like pigs
    slapped down some lane,
    our
    grassbrains
    singing
    toward the
    blade.
     
 
    by
    god,
    you’re an
    odd one,
    I said.
    we
    sat there
    smoking
    cigarettes
    at
    5
    in the morning.
     

poem while looking at an encyclopedia:
     
     
    it is a page of reptiles, green pink fuchsia
    slime motif
    sexual organs
    lips teeth fangs
    in the grass of my brain
    bringing down 1917 Spads,
    games with toy cars
    in a boy’s