• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

he seemed to stand up

so I couldn’t see

her

and the woman smiled at him

but I didn’t smile

at him

he kept looking at himself in the

train window

and standing up and taking off his

coat and then standing up

and putting it back

on

he polished his belt buckle with a

delighted vigor

and his neck was red and

his face was red and his eyes were a

pretty blue

but I didn’t like

him

and every time I went to the can

he was either in one of the cans

or he was in front of one of the mirrors

combing his hair or

shaving

and he was always walking up and down the

aisles

or drinking water

I watched his Adam’s apple juggle the water

down

he was always in my

eyes

but we never spoke

and I remembered all the other trains

all the other buses

all the other wars

he got off at Pasadena

vainer than any woman

he got off at Pasadena

proud and

dead

the rest of the train ride—

8 or 10 miles—

was perfect.

in the center of the action

in the center of the action

you have to lay down like an animal

until it

charges, you

have to lay down

in the center of the action

lay down and wait until it charges then you

must get

up

face it get

it before it gets

you

the whole pro cess is more

shy than

vulnerable so

lay down and wait sometimes it’s

ten minutes sometimes it’s years sometimes it

never arrives but you can’t rush it push

it

there’s no way to cheat or get a

jump on it you have to

lay down

lay down and wait like

an animal.

poetry

it

takes

a lot of

desperation

dissatisfaction

and

disillusion

to

write

a

few

good

poems.

it’s not

for

everybody

either to

write

it

or even to

read

it.

notes upon the flaxen aspect:

a John F. Kennedy flower knocks upon my door and is

shot through the neck;

the gladiolas gather by the dozens around the tip of

India

dripping into Ceylon;

dozens of oysters read Germaine Greer.

meanwhile, I itch from the slush of the Philippines

to the eye of the minnow

the minnow being eaten by the cumulative dreams of

Simón Bolívar. O,

freedom from the limitation of angular distance would be

delicious.

war is perfect,

the solid way drips and leaks,

Schopenhauer laughed for 72 years,

and I was told by a very small man in a New York City

pawnshop

one afternoon:

“Christ got more attention than I did

but I went further on less…”

well, the distance between 5 points is the same as the

distance between 3 points is the same as the distance

between one point:

it is all as cordial as a bonbon:

all this that we are wrapped

in:

eunuchs are more exact than sleep

the postage stamp is mad, Indiana is ridiculous

the chameleon is the last walking flower.

the fisherman

he comes out at 7:30 a.m. every day

with 3 peanut butter sandwiches, and

there’s one can of beer

which he floats in the bait bucket.

he fishes for hours with a small trout pole

three-quarters of the way down the pier.

he’s 75 years old and the sun doesn’t tan him,

and no matter how hot it gets

the brown and green lumberjack stays on.

he catches starfish, baby sharks, and mackerel;

he catches them by the dozen,

speaks to nobody.

sometime during the day

he drinks his can of beer.

at 6 p.m. he gathers his gear and his catch

walks down the pier

across several streets

where he enters a small Santa Monica apartment

goes to the bedroom and opens the evening paper

as his wife throws the starfish, the sharks, the mackerel

into the garbage

he lights his pipe

and waits for dinner.

the 1930s

places to hunt

places to hide are

getting harder to find, and pet

canaries and goldfish too, did you notice

that?

I remember when pool halls were pool halls

not just tables in

bars;

and I remember when neighborhood women

used to cook pots of beef stew for their

unemployed husbands

when their bellies were sick with

fear;

and I remember when kids used to watch the rain

for hours and

would