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program.

I tried to flush

the program

away

but it just swam

sluggishly about

and

remained.

I got out of

there and found

another

empty stall.

that boy was ready

for his life to come,

he would undoubtedly

be highly successful,

the lying little

prick.

eulogy

with old cars, especially when you buy them secondhand

and drive them for many years

a love affair is inevitable:

you even learn to

accept their little

eccentricities:

the leaking water pump

the failing plugs

the rusted throttle arm

the reluctant carburetor

the oily engine

the dead clock

the frozen speedometer and

other sundry

defects.

you also learn all the tricks to

keep the love affair alive:

how to slam the glove compartment so that

it will stay closed,

how to slap the headlight with an open palm

in order to have

light,

how many times to pump the gas pedal

and how long to wait before

touching the starter,

and you overlook each burn hole in the

upholstery

and each spring

poking through the fabric.

your car has been in and out of

police impounds,

has been ticketed for various

malfunctions:

broken wipers,

no turn signals, missing

brake light, broken tail lights, bad

brakes, excessive

exhaust and so forth

but in spite of everything

you knew you were in good hands,

there was never an accident, the

old car moved you from one place to

another,

faithfully

—the poor man’s miracle.

so when that last breakdown did occur,

when the valves quit,

when the tired pistons

cracked, or the

crankshaft failed and

you sold it for

junk

—you then had to watch it carted

away

hanging there

from the back of the tow truck

wheeled off

as if it had no

soul,

the bald rear tires

the cracked back window and

the twisted license plate

were the last things you

saw, and it

hurt

as if some woman you loved very

much

and lived with

year after year

had died

and now you

would never

again know

her music

her magic

her unbelievable

fidelity.

the drowning

for five years I have been looking

across the way

at the side of a red apartment house.

there must be people in there

even love in there

whatever that means.

here blows a horn, there sounds a

piano, and yesterday’s newspapers are as

yellow as the grass.

five years.

a man can drown in five years,

while the red bricks

stand forever.

I hear sounds now like dancing in the

air

great bladders of blood are being loosed in

Mariposa Ave.

sweat drenches my temple like beads on a

cold beer can

as armies fight in my head.

I see a woman come out of the redbrick

apartment house.

she is fat and comfortable

the slow horse of her body moves

under a dress of pink carnations

playing tricks with my better sense

and now she is gone and

the bricks look back at me

the bricks with their

windows and the windows look at me

and a bird on a telephone wire looks

and I feel naked as I

try to forget all the good dead.

a band plays wildly

LOOKAWAY, LOOKAWAY,

DIXIELAND!

as they empty bladders of poison

and bags of oranges over Mariposa Ave.

and the cars run through them like poor snow

and my pink woman comes back and I

try to tell her

wait! wait!

don’t go back in there!

but she goes inside as

my bird flies away

and it is just

another hot evening in

Los Angeles:

some bricks, a mongoose or two, Chimera and

disbelief.

(uncollected)

fooling Marie (the poem)

he met her at the racetrack, a strawberry

blonde with round hips, well-bosomed, long legs,

turned-up nose, flower mouth, in a pink dress,

wearing white high-heeled shoes.

she began asking him questions about various

horses while looking up at him with her pale blue

eyes.

he suggested the bar and they had a drink, then

watched the next race together.

he hit fifty-win on a sixty-to-one shot and she

jumped up and down.

then she whispered in his ear,

“you’re the magic man! I want to fuck you!”

he grinned and said, “I’d like to, but

Marie…my wife…”

she laughed, “we’ll go to a motel!”

so they cashed the ticket, went