Tomato Pies, 25 Cents

The fellow talking to himself is me,
Though I don't know it. That's to say, I see
Him every morning shave and comb his hair
And then lose track of him until he starts to care,
Inflating sex dolls out of thin air
In front of his computer, in a battered leather chair
That needs to be thrown out . . . then I lose track
Until he strides along the sidewalk on the attack

I

The whole of human history …

The whole of human history
seems to be the story of men who kill,
and of men who are killed;
of murderers who light their cigarettes
with trembling hands,

Our age bereft of nobility
How can our faces show it?
I look for love.
My lips stand out
dry and cracked with want
of it.
Oh it is well.
My poem shall show the need for it.

9:13 p.m., Lucky Bock in hand,
I inscribe: walked the lovely
33 blocks to school today, streets clear and
thick melting snow all around.
taught my 4 hours of poetry; the afternoon
class was hard; kid named Schweikert
kept on fucking up. took typed-up
poems of yesterday to Platt and put up

For Naomi Ginsberg, 1894—1956 I
Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes, while I walk on the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village.

Mary sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table
Waiting for Warren. When she heard his step,
She ran on tip-toe down the darkened passage
To meet him in the doorway with the news
And put him on his guard. ‘Silas is back.’
She pushed him outward with her through the door
And shut it after her. ‘Be kind,’ she said.
She took the market things from Warren’s arms
And set them on the porch, then drew him down
To sit beside her on the wooden steps.

‘When was I ever anything but kind to him?
But I’ll not have the fellow back,’ he said.
‘I told him so last haying, didn’t I?
If he left then, I said, that ended it.

America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956.
I can’t stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.
I don’t feel good don’t bother me.
I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?

One of those appointments you postpone
until anxiety propels you to the phone,
then have to wait too long for, to take
an inconvenient time . . . Late in the day,
an old man and I watch the minute hand

on the waiting room wall. I’ve papers
to grade, but he wants someone to talk to,
and his attendant’s rude, so he turns

Part Four of “Pro Femina” At Samoa, hardly unpacked, I commenced planting,
When I’d opened the chicken crates, built the Cochins a coop.