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now you’ve spilled it all!

I hear them open the door

go down the stairway,

get into the car.

I hear them drive away. they are gone, down the hill

on the way to

nursery school.

grass

at the window

I watch a man with a

power mower

the sounds of his doing race like

flies and bees

on the wallpaper,

it is like a warm fire, and

better than eating steak,

and the grass is green enough

and the sun is sun enough

and what’s left of my life

stands there

checking glints of green flying;

it is a giant disrobing of

care, stumbling away from

doing.

suddenly I understand

old men in rockers

bats in Colorado caves

tiny lice crawling into

the eyes of dead birds.

back and forth

he follows his gasoline

sound. it is

interesting enough,

with

the streets

flat on their Spring backs

and smiling.

crucifix in a deathhand

yes, they begin out in a willow, I think

the starch mountains begin out in the willow

and keep right on going without regard for

pumas and nectarines

somehow these mountains are like

an old woman with a bad memory and

a shopping basket.

we are in a basin. that is the

idea. down in the sand and the alleys,

this land punched-in, cuffed-out, divided,

held like a crucifix in a deathhand,

this land bought, resold, bought again and

sold again, the wars long over,

the Spaniards all the way back in Spain

down in the thimble again, and now

real estaters, subdividers, landlords, freeway

engineers arguing. this is their land and

I walk on it, live on it a little while

near Hollywood here I see young men in rooms

listening to glazed recordings

and I think too of old men sick of music

sick of everything, and death like suicide

I think is sometimes voluntary, and to get your

hold on the land here it is best to return to the

Grand Central Market, see the old Mexican women,

the poor…I am sure you have seen these same women

many years before

arguing

with the same young Japanese clerks

witty, knowledgeable and golden

among their soaring store of oranges, apples

avocados, tomatoes, cucumbers—

and you know how these look, they do look good

as if you could eat them all

light a cigar and smoke away the bad world.

then it’s best to go back to the bars, the same bars

wooden, stale, merciless, green

with the young policeman walking through

scared and looking for trouble,

and the beer is still bad

it has an edge that already mixes with vomit and

decay, and you’ve got to be strong in the shadows

to ignore it, to ignore the poor and to ignore yourself

and the shopping bag between your legs

down there feeling good with its avocados and

oranges and fresh fish and wine bottles, who needs

a Fort Lauderdale winter?

25 years ago there used to be a whore there

with a film over one eye, who was too fat

and made little silver bells out of cigarette

tinfoil. the sun seemed warmer then

although this was probably not

true, and you take your shopping bag

outside and walk along the street

and the green beer hangs there

just above your stomach like

a short and shameful shawl, and

you look around and no longer

see any

old men.

the screw-game

one of the terrible things is

really

being in bed

night after night

with a woman you no longer

want to screw.

they get old, they don’t look very good

anymore—they even tend to

snore, lose

spirit.

so, in bed, you turn sometimes,

your foot touches hers—

god, awful!—

and the night is out there

beyond the curtains

sealing you together

in the

tomb.

and in the morning you go to the

bathroom, pass in the hall, talk,

say odd things; eggs fry, motors

start.

but sitting across

you have 2 strangers

jamming toast into mouths

burning the sullen head and gut with

coffee.

in 10 million places in America

it is the same—

stale lives propped against each

other

and no place to

go.

you get in the car

and you drive to work

and there are more strangers there, most of them

wives and husbands of somebody

else, and besides the guillotine of work, they

flirt and joke