Another Way to Play Read online

  or breathe right or eat everything in sight

  as I am famous for doing. All I can do is

  “muse.” I better stop smoking dope too;

  I can’t control it anymore, or anything.

  Saturday night, June 8th, was possibly, probably,

  the finest night of “love” I’ve ever experienced,

  when just “brushing your lips with mine” felt like

  fucking for a year, or coming all over myself for days,

  buckets full, I loved you that night

  like I never loved anyone, just dreamt of, but

  never really believed could be. Now what?

  Joann called, I kissed my typewriter,

  “classical music” sounds suddenly abrasive

  and I want to throw out all my shoes

  as some sort of gesture only

  that doesn’t seem to be enough

  and burning them would only add to my fears

  that I’m really going mad

  goddamnit

  I REFUSE

  TO LET WHAT I’VE ALWAYS WANTED

  KEEP ME FROM HAVING WHAT I ALWAYS WANTED

  only

  I don’t know what I want . . .

  NO OTHER LOVE HAVE I

  That’s a lie only not a lie

  By the time you read this

  I might die of love for you

  That means something doesn’t it?

  Even if I do what people might think is

  “Falling in love” with all kinds of people

  Who think differently or think I’m swell

  Or let me touch them any way I want to

  Or especially any way they have never.

  Picture this neutral type

  Maybe public noncommercial FM radio announcer

  Who knows what he knows

  Which no one really cares about

  And he’s talking about the fantasies you’ve had

  That you haven’t admitted to anyone and I’m there

  Touching you wherever you say or he says

  And there’s tiny birds banging up against the windows

  Trying to get in to take tiny baths in the places

  Where you’re getting wet as my fingers come

  All over you.

  I wouldn’t say “I love you” to just anyone

  Or even anyone I loved

  It just doesn’t seem like a bright thing to do.

  Remember in Casablanca how Ingrid Bergman never tells

  Her husband “Victor Lazlo” she loves him and once

  When it seems she might he stops her and says

  “I already know” or something so presumptuous

  You were glad she didn’t say it? Well I’m glad I didn’t too.

  Except I did to you which is why it seems

  There really is no other love in my life

  Only we both know I love most books

  Just because they open if I want them to

  And most music because it heightens the effect

  Of “my life is a movie” and reminds me of other stars

  And I love to eat most food if it’s good and

  Most people if they enjoy it or seem to

  Convincingly of course

  And the kind of rainy day you get only in cities

  Usually other cities.

  O well, this could go on forever

  Like “love” is supposed to in our dreams

  Only in my dreams “love” usually appears

  In the form of little embarrassments from childhood

  Made right at last.

  LIFE IS A BITCH

  for Jane DeLynn

  we fall in love

  the love makes us

  happy, the world

  makes us less happy

  we wonder if it’s

  the love, we get

  nervous, that makes us

  jealous, we wonder if

  the other one can

  love us like we love them

  or if we love them

  as much as we say

  if we feel this

  nervous way, so

  we end up fighting

  or at least arguing

  or at least questioning

  or at least being a nuisance

  to the one we only want to

  make happy, because

  they have made us so happy

  only now they make us

  nervous, so we use

  the word bitch, which—

  is sexist

  like life

  obviously, I mean

  we never say

  “ain’t life a prick?”

  though it can be

  IN THE RECENT FUTURE

  for Ana

  We were going to make some

  money

  pay our bills

  take a trip out of the country

  think about getting married

  having a kid

  We would buy a loft and

  renovate it

  make a real home for ourselves

  get some new clothes

  go to the theater and

  the ballet

  see all the movies we missed

  during our money troubles

  go out to nice restaurants

  again

  We were going to take acting classes

  do some commercials

  and modeling

  win the lottery

  and get money for writing

  about our exciting life together

  We would visit friends in

  California and

  Puerto Rico

  take each other home to

  meet the folks

  We were going to work hard but

  play hard too

  keep each other interested

  and help each other out

  We would eat better, lose some

  weight, make new friends and

  have great parties

  We were going to spend more time

  together

  doing the things we liked to do

  and some time alone catching up

  on our reading

  and writing letters long overdue

  We weren’t going to buy things

  on credit as much

  or write so many checks

  or borrow any more money

  We would pay back our friends

  and buy each other the

  presents we couldn’t afford before

  We were going to do alright

  We were going to be alright

  We were going to be happy

  and together

  forever

  ON TURNING 35

  cautious

  crazy

  clumsy

  courting heartbreak

  but

  she’s the one

  the way

  “she” always is

  because

  that’s the other reason

  we go on—

  and we do go on—

  the other reason being

  the expression of it

  like this

  only better

  SHE’S FUNNY THAT WAY

  for Rain

  She’s over sixteen but still

  my teenage queen, as clear and

  direct as a laser beam, she’s

  more special than kiwi fruit

  with cream, she’s not “the

  girl of my dreams” but the

  star of my dream . . .

  She’s better than most, the

  butter on my toast, the cole

  slaw and russian on my New

  York roast beef sandwich on

  rye—New York!—she’s the

  Chrysler building and 24-karat

  gilding on my favorite book of

  notes for reading on the boats

  we’ll take to all the places

  I used to hate because they

  seemed so spit
eful and dated

  separated from her I hadn’t

  met yet but knew I’d recognize

  when I did and I did and I’m

  grateful for the fate that

  made us us cause she’s more

  than enough of everything I

  always wanted and she let’s

  me in on it with only the mild

  fuss of apprehension over

  where we go with so much . . .

  She’s a little strange but nice

  and twice as good as being

  recognized by everyone, even

  Walter Cronkite!—Oh when

  ever she lets me hover about

  her skin before she lets me

  in I swear I love her bones

  and everything else inside her

  as much as I love what she lets

  me see and the air it all warms

  up about her and keeps scented

  for me: I can’t do without her!

  she’s the cat’s pajamas, the

  poppas and the mommas, she’s

  boss, she’s bad, she’s the woman

  from Glad, she’s dy-no-mite,

  she’s a little bit of all right,

  she’s psychedelic, she’s copasetic,

  she’s right on target, and right

  on time, she’s top drawer, she’s

  the bottom line, she’s the last

  chance, she’s a taste of something

  fine, she’s one way, the right way,

  I-did-it-my-way, she-did-it-her-way,

  she’s rarer than the rarest antique,

  she’s a one-of-its-kind, she’s

  “unique,” she’s the peak, what the

  meek long to inherit, the wind I

  speak to in the street at night

  walking home alone but seeing her

  there in the air all around me . . .

  This isn’t what I meant it to be but

  she is—she’s everything I meant

  her to be but still she, and she’s

  what she means before I ever enter

  the scene, she’s proud, and deep,

  and I’m loud and need sleep all

  the time cause I run my engine at

  a steady high speed out of some

  need to supply energy to the times

  I have, and she can take that and

  still be all she needs to be, I swear

  she’s more honest than Abe, more

  likable than Ike, more sincere than

  Jimmy, more classy than Jackie, she’s

  greater than Ali, more gamin like than

  Audrey Hepburn or Leslie Caron, she’s

  a cross between Katherine Hepburn

  and Geraldine Chaplin only not like

  them at all because she’s tough but

  totally light as air, I wish I could

  describe the way she sits or stands

  and paces and taps a cigarette or

  spaces her quiet observations about

  everything that matters like how you

  work on what’s important all the time

  WHITE LIFE

  (Jordan Davies 1980)

  LIFE

  Someone comes up to me on the street

  starts talking about their “love life”—

  how “fucked up it is”—pushing their need.

  All the cars going by flash in the sun

  like kisses blown from lost loves

  disappearing over the horizon of “maturity”

  and I want to say “Are you kidding me?!”

  But I know I can’t judge anyone else’s pain

  even though my father’s 75 this year and complained

  so much longer and louder than my mother

  who “passed” ten years ago, on Mother’s Day,

  looking startled, as though she hadn’t expected

  death, or god, or whatever she saw approaching

  to be so heartless about it after all.

  That was pain. Or the news that

  my oldest sister is “going blind” just like that

  and my father dumb enough to say

  “When we found out you had diabetes at seven

  we never expected you to live even this long . . .”

  and losing the pigment in her skin so that

  when statistics or simplifiers list her as “white”

  they’ll finally be right. Or the way that man today

  waited so patiently for someone, this time me,

  to come and guide his blind steps across the avenue

  where cars flashed for him in ways I’ll never know

  and me still high on the look in the eyes

  of a woman he’ll never see like me. Or the news

  of some money coming my way I got over the phone today

  my two deaf cousins would have to wait for the mails

  to hear. But maybe they should be grateful

  for knowing where it hurts or doesn’t hurt

  or doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do

  and feel sorry for you, or me, when we don’t know

  what it is that keeps us from smiling and expanding

  on the grace of all that’s intact and working for us

  in ways that keeps us looking for “love”

  as though we knew where it was all along.

  SUPERREALISM

  First of all I’m naked

  while I’m typing this,

  only my rash is air brushed,

  the rest is visceral energy

  for my poetry, in this case

  depicted objects of tough minded

  harsh light that emphasizes

  the previous generation of

  dismayed bridegrooms at the

  altar of the cosmic alienation.

  I mean for instance me,

  and Winch, and our contemporaries

  were tuned up by neosurrealist

  poets, trite poets, hardnosed

  rugged individualist poets and

  ironic pap poets of the ’50s and ’60s.

  We apply the new techniques,

  along with a thorough knowledge

  of consumer products that share

  the airless synergetic crackle

  of methodologies, to our experiences

  like cosmetics in the undertaker’s

  steady but too subjective grip.

  Actually I’m cold sitting here

  at the typewriter on my lunch hour

  naked and exhausted from masturbating

  all morning to create the right mood

  for poetry uninvolved in the ego

  like the “actualist poetry” of the

  early ’70s with which I was associated

  without my foreknowledge or permission

  or agreement or even knowing what was

  meant by that term. It had something

  to do with the reproduction of

  objects in “the poem” as though

  they were “actual” not transcendy!

  In some poetry circles craftsmanship is

  considered to be a dazzling array of

  chromatic effects that draw our attention

  like a physical presence, but to us

  superrealists on the nonhierarchical

  ladder of self esteem the elusiveness of

  technique in a savage amalgam of clarity

  avoids value judgments as to what ought

  to be deceptive or enthusiastic toward

  the unimaginative and divides the universe

  into something spilled and something

  wiped up. This is one example.

  APRIL FOOL’S DAY 1975

  The day came on bright and shiny;

  I didn’t know what to say.

  Spring finally here but

  on April Fool’s Day?

  Does that mean more winter tomorrow?

  Does it matter? Inside I feel tiny

  watching my frie
nds separate again, everywhere,

  or the tv letting me know it’s not over

  over there,

  or my special ignorance,

  the dumbness only I can confront,

  but still don’t know how to:

  not meditation,

  not revolution,

  not androgyny or drag in any of its forms,

  not even poetry,

  not even spring.

  In my heart there are shelves

  and on the shelves there are too many books

  and too many of the books are worn out

  or boring or impossible to understand.

  And in my hand?

  Those little hearts

  the poems that

  even when dumb, are sacred.

  I’m glad we all aren’t naked:

  it’s not the sixties anymore.

  I want to wear nice clothes

  and carry on my life behind closed doors.

  I want to sit with the rich

  or hustling poor and still be myself.

  I want to make my kids secure.

  I want to share with them

  what joy a good night’s sleep

  with bright and shiny morning

  can bring to the heart—

  the chance to start

  again.

  “TO BE ALONE . . .”

  To be alone and not talk much,

  that was a way to get the women.

  To be alone and talk too much

  was the way to get yourself a

  reputation as a jerkoff, a big

  mouth, a noise, unless you made

  it your noise so uniquely you

  became a freak, so personally

  you became impossible to ignore

  or learn from, so honest and

  unrelenting and smart you became

  a fucking legend in your own

  town, your own home, your own

  place to be alone because it

  didn’t change that much even

  when you were invited to parties

  to be a conversation piece, a

  possible save in case it didn’t

  turn out too lively, got boring

  and people needed something to

  distract them from the ways

  they couldn’t be together.

  You could name those ways and

  demonstrate them, and sometimes,

  more and more often as you got

  better and better at your noise,

  the ladies with their own noisy

  struggles with their own excited

  souls and peculiarities gave you

  what the others got by keeping

  quiet from the women who were

  in between, because the quiet

  ones came to your noise too,

  only not when anyone else was

  noticing, just for you, just to