-
good weather is like good women-
it doesn’t always happen
and when it does it doesn’t always last.
man is more stable:
if he’s bad there’s more chance he’ll stay that way,
or if he’s good he might hang on,
but a woman is changed by children
age
diet
conversation
sex
the moon
the absence or presence of sun
or good times.
a woman must be nursed into subsistence
by love
where a man can become stronger
by being hated.
I am drinking tonight in Spangler’s Bar
and I remember the cows I once painted in Art class
and they looked good
they looked better than anything in here.
I am drinking in Spangler’s Bar
wondering which to love
and which to hate,
but the rules are gone:
I love and hate only myself-
they stand outside me like an orange
dropped from the table and rolling away;
it’s what I’ve got to decide:
kill myself or love myself?
which is the treason?
where’s the information coming from?
books…like broken glass:
I wouldn’t wipe my ass with ‘em
yet, it’s getting darker, see?
(we drink here and speak to each other and seem knowing.)
buy the cow with the biggest tits
buy the cow with the biggest rump.
present arms.
the bartender slides me a beer
it runs down the bar like an Olympic sprinter
and the pair of pliers that is my hand stops it, lifts it,
golden piss of dull temptation,
I drink and stand there
the weather bad for cows
but my brush is ready to stroke up the green grass
straw eye sadness takes me all over
and I drink the beer straight down
order a shot fast to give me the guts and the love to go on.
from “poems written before jumping out of an 8 story window” - 1966
