The Last Night of the Earth Poems (18 page)

 

dumb,

Jesus Christ,

some people are so dumb

you can hear them

splashing around

in their dumbness

as their eyes

look out of their

heads.

they have

most of their

parts: hands, feet,

ears, legs, elbows,

intestines, fingernails,

noses and so

forth

but

there’s nothing

there

yet

they are able to

speak,

form sentences—

but what

comes out

of their mouths

are the stalest

concepts, the most

warped beliefs,

they are the repository

of all the obvious

stupidities

they have

stuffed

themselves

with

and it hurts me

to

look at them

to

listen to them,

I want to

run and hide

I want to

escape their engulfing

nullity

 

there is no

horror movie

worse,

no murder

as

unsolved

 

but

the world

goes on

and

they

go on

 

dumbly

slamming

my guts to

pieces.

 

some nights you don’t sleep.

of course

having 3 or 4 cats on the bed

doesn’t help.

my wife likes to carry them up

from downstairs

but

it’s not always the cats, it’s

hardly anything,

say,

re-working horse systems in my

brain, or it’s a cold moon, an

itchy back, the

thought of death out

there

beyond the venetian blinds

or

I’ll think nice things about my

wife, she looks so small there

under the blanket, a little

lump, that’s all

(death, you take me first, please,

this lady needs a gentle space of

peace

without me).

 

then a boat horn blows from the

harbor.

I pull my head up, stretching

my thick neck, I see the

clock:

3:36 a.m.

that always does it: looking at

the clock.

by 3:45 a.m. I am asleep, just

like the cats, just like my

wife,

the venetian blinds closing us

all in.

 

tonight I am nothing

I have lost touch with the walls

I have seen too many heads, hands, feet,

heard too many voices,

I am weary with the continuation,

the music is old music,

there is no stirring in the air.

 

on my wall is a photo of

Celine,

he has a cane,

carries a basket,

wears a coat too heavy,

a long strand of hair falls across his face,

he has been stunned by life,

the dogs have had at him,

it got to be too much

much too much.

 

he walks through a small forest,

this doctor,

this typer of words,

all he wants to do is die,

that’s all he wants,

and his photo is on the wall

and he is dead.

 

this year

1988

all these months

have had

a terribleness to them

that I have never felt

before.

 

I light a cigarette and

wait.

 

editor, critic, bigot, wit:

what do you expect of me

now that my youth has

flown and even my middle

age is

gone?

 

I expect what I’ve always

expected:

the hard-driven line

and a bit of help

from the

gods.

 

as the walls get closer

there should be more to

say

instead of

less.

 

each day is still a

hammer,

a flower.

 

editor, critic, bigot, wit:

the grave has no

mirror

 

and I am still this

machine

this paper

and all the

etceteras.

 

it was nice to be a boy in a dark movie house,

one entered the dream so much more easily

then.

I liked the French Foreign Legion movies

best and there were many of them

then.

 

I loved the forts and the sand and the

lost and desperate men.

these men were brave and they had beautiful

eyes.

 

I never saw men like that

in my neighborhood.

the neighborhood men were hunched and

miserable and angry and

cowardly.

 

I was going to join the French Foreign Legion.

 

I sat in the dark movie houses and I was

one of them.

 

we had been fighting for days without food

and with very little

water.

 

casualties had been horrendous.

 

our fort was surrounded, we were down to a

last few.

we propped up our dead comrades with

their rifles pointed toward the

desert

to make the Arabs think that they had not

killed many of us

otherwise we would have been

overwhelmed.

 

we ran from dead man to dead man

firing their rifles.

our sergeant was wounded

3 or 4 times but

he still commanded

screaming his orders.

 

then more of us died gallantly, then

we were down to the last two

(one of them the sergeant) but we

fought on, then we were out of

ammunition, the Arabs scaled the walls

on ladders and we knocked them back

with our rifle butts but more and more of

them were clambering over the walls, there

were too many

of them we were

finished, no chance, then there was the sound of a

BUGLE!

reinforcements were arriving!

fresh and rested upon the backs of thunderous

horses!

they charged en masse over the sand,

hundreds of them

dressed in bright and blazing uniforms.

the Arabs scattered down the walls

running for their horses and their

lives

but most of them were

doomed.

 

then the sergeant, knowing victory, was dying

in my arms.

“Chinaski,” he said to me, “the fort is

ours!”

he gave a small smile, his head fell back and

he was gone.

then I was home again

I was back in my room.

a hunched, miserable and angry man

walked into the room and said,

“get out there now and mow the lawn.

I see a hair of grass sticking up!”

 

out there in the yard

I pushed the mower over the same grass

once more

back and forth

back and forth

wondering why all the brave men with

beautiful eyes were so far away,

wondering if they’d still be there

when I arrived.

 

actually, I do think that

my father was

insane,

the way he drove his

car,

honking,

cursing at people;

the way he got into

violent arguments

in public places

over the most

trivial incidents;

the way he beat

his only child

almost daily

upon the slightest

provocation.

 

of course, bullies

sometimes meet their

masters.

 

I remember once

entering the house

and my mother

told me,

“your father was

in a terrible

fight.”

 

I looked for him,

found him sitting

on the toilet

with the bathroom

door

open.

his face was a mass of

bruises, welts,

puffed and black

eyes.

he even had a broken

arm

in a cast.

 

I was 13 years old.

I stood looking

at him.

I looked for

some time.

 

then he screamed,

“what the hell you

staring at!

what’s your

problem?”

 

I looked at him

some more,

then walked

off.

 

it was to be

3 years later

that

I would knock him

on his

ass, no problem

with that

at

all.

 

some people

grind away

making their

unhappiness

the ultimate

factor

of their

existence

until

finally

they are

just

automatically

unhappy,

their

suspicious

upset

snarling

selves

grinding

 

on

and

at

and

for

and

through

 

their only

relief

being

 

to meet

another

unhappy

person

or

to

create

one.

 

at this time

I know a couple of men

who seem to be in

love

while their ladies are treating

them

off-handedly or

worse.

 

these men are consumed by

their

ill-fate, can’t

climb out of their

fix.

 

I too

have been in that

way,

only I was

worse

off:

I was charmed and

ensnared by

caseic beldames,

slimey slatterns,

inchoate prostitutes,

hypacodont

mesdames—

all the hustling

shrews of the

universe

found me,

and I

found them

wise

witty and

beautiful

then.

 

it was only after

some luck of

distance and time

that I was able to

realize

that

these ladies

were even less than

less.

 

so

now

when these men

tell me their sad

stories

there is nothing I can

say

because to me

their women look

like

hypacodont

beldames,

inchoate

slatterns,

caseic

mesdames

and

slimey

prostitutes,

not to mention

piss-biting

shrews

 

and they

most

probably

are.

true is true

enough,

yet

at small

tiny and

rare

moments

 

I wonder

what

I seemed

like

to my

ladies?