Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit Read Online Free

phoned
    nobody came by with a beer
    my girlfriend didn’t phone
    all I could hear were the crickets and it was
    hot
    and I kept working at it
    getting up and down
    until the first of the sun came through the window
    through the bushes
    and then I got on the bed
    and the soul stayed
    inside at last and
    I slept.
    now people come by
    beating on the doors and windows
    the phone rings
    the phone rings again and again
    I get great letters in the mail
    hate letters and love letters.
    everything is the same again.
     

2347 Duane
     
     
    there’s this blue baby and she’s sucking a
    blue breast under a green vine that has
    grown from the ceiling,
    and further to the right
    there’s a light brown girl
    against a dark brown background
    and she’s leaning out over a chair looking
    pensive, I suppose.
    my cigarette just went out
    there are never any matches around here
    and I get up and go into the kitchen
    and light it on a 30 year old stove.
    I get back without accident.
    now behind me on a pink chair
    is a large old-fashioned shears.
    it is 15 minutes past midnight
    and the hook is on the door
    and over the tall twisted lamp by the bed
    is a red floppy hat that is used as a lampshade
    and a small dog growls at the tall cold sky outside.
    there are two mattresses on the floor
    and I have slept on one of those mattresses
    many nights.
    they say they are going to bulldoze this place
    which is owned by a Japanese wrestler called Fuji.
    I don’t see how it can be replaced with anything better.
     
 
    she fixed the bathtub faucet and the faucet in the sink
    tonight. she can’t roll a cigarette but she keeps the
    plumbing bills down.
    we ate some Col. Sanders chicken with coleslaw, mashed spuds,
    gravy and biscuits.
    it’s 23 minutes past midnight
    and they are going to bulldoze this place,
    I don’t mean tomorrow, I mean soon,
    and the small dog growls at the sky again
    and my cigarette is out again;
    the love on that one mattress near the door,
    the sex and the arguments and the dreams and the
    conversations,
    that bulldozer is going to come up missing there,
    and even when it knocks down the trees and the crapper
    and eats holes in the dirt driveway
    it’s not going to get it all,
    and when I drive by in 6 months and see the highrise
    filled with 50 people with good stable incomes,
    I will still remember the blue baby sucking the blue breast,
    the vine through the roof, the brown girl,
    the leaky faucets, the spiders and the termites,
    the grey and yellow paint, the tablecloth over the front
    window, and that mattress near the door.
     

a radio with guts
     
     
    it was on the 2nd floor on Coronado Street
    I used to get drunk
    and throw the radio through the window
    while it was playing, and, of course,
    it would break the glass in the window
    and the radio would sit out there on the roof
    still playing
    and I’d tell my woman,
    “Ah, what a marvelous radio!”
     
 
    the next morning I’d take the window
    off the hinges
    and carry it down the street
    to the glass man
    who would put in another pane.
     
 
    I kept throwing that radio through the window
    each time I got drunk
    and it would sit out there on the roof
    still playing—
    a magic radio
    a radio with guts,
    and each morning I’d take the window
    back to the glass man.
     
 
    I don’t remember how it ended exactly
    though I do remember
    we finally moved out.
    there was a woman downstairs who worked in
    the garden in her bathing suit
    and her husband complained he couldn’t sleep nights
    because of me
    so we moved out
    and in the next place
    I either forgot to throw the radio out the window
    or I didn’t feel like it
    anymore.
    I do remember missing the woman who worked in the
    garden in her bathing suit,
    she really dug with that trowel
    and she put her behind up in the air
    and I used to sit in the window
    and watch the sun shine all over that thing
     
 
    while the music played.
     

Solid State Marty
     
     
    he’s almost 80 and they went to
    visit him