The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills Read Online Free Page A

and a piece of tape
    is not much, I have learned late,
    but give me 14 days or 14 years,
    I will kill any man
    who would touch or take
    whatever’s left.
     

the moment of truth
     
     
    he died a suicide in a Detroit hotel room
    on skid row
    and he was stiff when they found him,
    rat poison…
    I was managing the place then,
    trying to collect rents and
    emptying the trash,
    and I stood there and watched them put the needle in him,
    his eyes were wide open and one of them slid his eyes
    shut, and then the needle began to take hold,
    he had died stiff upright in the chair
    and he began to loosen up
    and they found a couple of letters from his sister
    in another city, threw him on the stretcher and took him
    down the stairs. the sheets were still kinda clean
    so I just made the bed over again, cleaned out the dresser,
    and when I walked out, all the winos were in the hall
    in their pants and dirty undershirts, needing shaves and something to
    drink, and I told them: “all right, all you monkeys
    clear the god damned halls! you hurt my eyesight!”
    “a man died, sir. he was our friend,” one of them said.
    it was Benny the Dip. “all right, Benny,” I told him,
    “you’ve got one night left in here to get up the rent!”
    you should have seen the rest of them disappear:
    death doesn’t matter a damn when you need a place to sleep.
     

on the fire suicides of the buddhists
     
     
    “They only burn themselves to reach Paradise.”
    —Mme. Nhu
     
 
    original courage is good,
    motivation be damned,
    and if you say they are trained
    to feel no pain,
    are they
    guaranteed this?
    is it still not possible
    to die for somebody else?
     
 
    you sophisticates
    who lay back and
    make statements of explanation,
    I have seen the red rose burning
    and this means more.
     

a division
     
     
    I live in an old house where nothing
    screams victory
    reads history
    where nothing
    plants flowers
     
 
    sometimes my clock falls
    sometimes my sun is like a tank on fire
     
 
    I do not ask
    your armies
    or
    your kisses
    or
    your death
    I have my
    own
     
 
    my hands have arms
    my arms have shoulders
    my shoulders have me
    I have me
    you have me when you can see me
    but I don’t like you
    to see me
     
 
    I do not like you to see that
    I have eyes in my head
    and can walk
    and
    I do not want to
    answer your questions
    I do not want to
    amuse you
    I do not want you to
    amuse me
    or sicken me
    or talk about
    anything
     
 
    I do not want to
    love you
     
 
    I do not want to
    save you
     
 
    I do not want your arms
    I do not want your
    shoulders
     
 
    I have me
    you have you
     
 
    let that
    be.
     

conversation with a lady sipping a straight shot
     
     
    and Joe he was not much good
    even at half past 40, he insensibly
    loved whore and horse like the average man,
    his age would love what brought up color
    out of the stem of a dahlia, but so it goes,
    the gods break us in half with more than
    lightning, twice married twice divorced,
    who can ask for more than bloodshot eyes
    and bumblebeebelly, good men are broken
    daily in the Korea of useless sunlight;
    quitting jobs, getting fired more than rockets,
    knowing nothing, absolutely nothing
    except maybe the way he wanted his haircut,
    bouncing like a 16-year-old kid out of a
    bad dream, always late for work
    but never late for the first race
    or the end stool down at the HAPPY NIGHT.
    the saying is, Joe never grew up
    but in another way he never grew down either,
    trying to puff life into himself through his
    cheap cigar and flat jukebox music,
    or fat June who didn’t care either,
    telling her over and over,
    Baby, wait’ll you see what I’ve got!
    as if the whole thing were something new
    and fat June staring into her all-important beer
    shaking it and enjoying it
    as she would never enjoy herself again.
     
 
    and when Joe went, a child went,
    but they remember him: the whores, the bartenders,
    the bosses, the state unemployment offices,
    and the jocks—
    the way he