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THE LAUGHING MAN

The Laughing Man is hit
in the head with the bottle. He
stops laughing.

CHEZ MOI (THE GREENROOM)

- Sometimes you need a little
finesse. Fuck
we can but not kiss

she said, she wanted cream
with her peach. You know,
sweet & sick & simple. Pink prick

& red Riccadonna. I squeezed her
arm and we talked about the
Globocop. God,

I was so fucking amiable!
- You mean, like, real cream?
- Sometimes you need a lot.

A PORTRAIT OF A LADY

No – she said smiling – no.
(Lolita)

She’s not saying anything
except with doughnut jam
squashed on her favorite shirt

or something slightly green
like half a moist leaf stuck to the windshield
where the wipers won’t reach.

- How tall can I get?
- Taller then Marriott hotel, dear.
- Oh, look at you, she said smiling.

So when I had to hear exactly why
such a cool woman stoops to folly, she said:
- If I were a cat I would buy Whiskas.

(The closer you are the more kicks
I’m getting from nothing doing… oh
that suave sickness of mercedes-benz cool)

- Who cares, anyway, said she
with even more remote a smile
- now it is light.

She’s not saying anything
except what I think she’s saying:
that sick angel with pearl-tipped breasts.

WAKE

it’s kind of early now, the early
birds are too huge to fit in the dollhouse heaven
a long time before the neons will light up
in colors we’ll have yet to name

a man needs half his life to find himself a lasting fire
it’s easier to devise a beast, a god
then kill one good and hard
a man has a little god in each of his fingers

so many things a man can do without a wheel
without a word for it
without a thought of it
without a thought

a man runs from all manner of things
a man wishes for no limits to things
a man be carving hornéd creatures
into this shield of a cave

CITY LUNCH

To Agatha,
who gave me a lift, then drove away.

It wasn’t raining yet when I entered the bar.
It looked empty and lackluster.
There was no toilet or payphone there.
Which was fine, for I didn’t need any.

The table was pretty clean.
The burger I had wasn’t bad at all.
The fries were dry but the drink wasn’t.
The tray was, I thought, disposable.

I had to miss that girl no more.
The barmaid seemed young enough not to be my mother.
No, I didn’t smile at her.
It was not what I had in mind.

God gets boring when you let him have his way.
There was a firehose in the corner for emergency use.
However, this was not the case.
Nothing was really urgent.

When I was finished I didn’t feel hungry.
I was glad I didn’t mess up the table.
I quietly disposed of the tray.
When I left the bar it wasn’t raining yet.

IT’S LIKE THIS

(adapted from Time magazine)

I was driving down
this hill one day
and there were these two
little boys

the one on the left side
was waving and smiling
the one on the right side
threw a rock that broke my mirror

A TRUE STORY

(adapted from R.D.Laing’s The Divided Self)

A patient in a lie
detector was asked if
he was Napoleon.

No, he replied.

The lie
detector recorded that
he was lying.

ODE: AS NO HELP WAS AT HAND

All is shit
if you look long
enough said Robert

Au contraire
sir I said stained
with rain and birdshit

from TWENTY-FOUR EXPOSURES

It was time to go back.
I had been home a long time.
Bret Easton Ellis

1
I can’t rely on doors in this country.
The plate reads TIREZ on the outside
which I assume is akin to tear
but inside it only says POUSSEZ.
I have a limited understanding of the language.
I live between two floors
above a cooker, below a bathtub.
There is a knob you turn to enter
which grows like a big bronze mushroom
out of a flyspecked mirror.
One can’t rely on doors in this country.

2 (The High School for Translation)
A wrinkled Coke can falls to the Coke-colored floor.
The barman is gambling for slippery wet coins.
The ad on the wall reads ‘Clichés and Pains’
or my sight is failing. Your pint-of-Guinness
eyes do the thinking for me
while I fish for snails in my kriek.
An undeveloped picture of you inside
my one-size-fits-all camera
scrambled in calculated silver language.
Your name is Ruby
which is the only language I can interpret
the color of our common speech.
You are glowing.

3
There must be kids somewhere in the house.
The smell of overripe strawberries
sprouts from the rubbish bin.
An orange lollipop glued to the sink.
A baglady round the corner
with a blueberry face
smells of rotten apples.

5
Lighting a cigarette she holds it
barely above the flame. She has
places to go and things to do
judging
by the quiet efficiency of her gestures
exercising utmost control
over the glamorous leech that she
the heartbroker
stunningly pretty as advised
fluent in six human languages
driving – Lord but she’s driving -
is, in fact.
The name is Julie.

6 (Museum of Modern Art)

To Suzanne Schoutsen

‘You’re very good at vanishing’ I said
to a Klee when the girl’s quick figure
got lost behind a wall of Bosch. I scanned
a Picasso, turned at Delvaux
into a DeChirico alley but she was nowhere
to be found.
‘That’s right’ I heard a Chagall smile
as she emerged out a Duchamp
‘But I am just as good
at reappearing.’

9
Read The Tommyknockers all night.
The lamp is plastic white
it stinks on my desk.

10
‘I wonder how detailed they make them.’
At Laura Karan’s, she means the mannequins
unsmiling, suited, meaning business
cool collected unperturbed
she slips her hand-
There.
A broken gasp.

13
walls
on top of other
buildings
on top of other
walls

15 (Perspective)
From the kitchen window
I can (slicing an onion) see
a man
working in the garden
then a tree
then a wall
then a church
then
I guess, Europe.

17
I’d rather be in Venice now
not Paris, but Madrid
or at the very least Lisbon
Amsterdam perhaps, not London
but Venus, yes
that would do just fine.

18
The rain ain’t falling anymore:
it hangs on mist-laden air
the way chalk powder will
in a thick glass of water.

23 (Cuckoo’s Nest)
Woke up at noon too late to get up.
Without knocking
two Dutch workmen step into my room
and rip wires out the wall.
Well what do you know.
My bed gets full
of plaster.

24 (Night Life, Still Life)
‘Messieurs, jeune fille’ croons a pimp
down a dark street as we negotiate
the rubble at MacDonald’s back door. Trying
for another round we get lost, sort of -
and sneak a quick look at another curb girl
who stoops to meet the slow drivers’ eyes.
There are fat whores on display
smoking, cutting their toenails
under red or green neon glare
the only merchandise unprotected by iron
bars at this hour. We pass the night drinking
Coke and walking and wondering if it’s safe
to take a picture and if so
whether we could use the flash.

Brussels, February-June 1993
Łódź, October 1993

RUNNING STORY

One summer
we took to chasing girls.

We took it literally, though
Robert and I.

One morning walking toward breakfast
we caught a glimpse of one who lived across the hall.

We ran
after her.

Running
we bumped into a big fat girl walking toward breakfast.

We ran
(completely

out of our minds)
until we caught up with the girl we were after.

She smiled a bright hello
but we couldn’t

quit
running.

Good luck
smiling with the back of your head.

We ran all the way to the cafeteria
stood in the breathless doorway

and said hello to each and every morning girl
who came for coffee, cream and croissants.

MERCADO

(found)

As I was going by where
the cooking apples are
he called out and said
- Wouldn’t you like to try
an apple? – and we have
so many apples at home I’m
not very interested in
apples and
I said no as I walked
by and then I noticed
when I went
that I avoided that stand

Granada, Spain, February 1995

DAYS OUT

When lovely woman stoops to folly
and rests her soft machine on ground
I scan the cargo of my trolley: First,

Alka Seltzer’s double action soothes pain
extra fast. I got no hiccups, just cling
to your breath. When I was brushing

my teeth, you caressed your dormant hair
drier and smelled my musk
aftershave. We made just two

fast balls,
pink and blue, hitting each other
in a billiard pool, hitting the lights

to the swing of Hello
Goodbye, jive talking
among what they’d have called

celestial litter. But come,
comely lady and teach me
to give and not to give a shit. [See,

I xeroxed my palms like mad and kept
finding them in the toilet under a skylight
in the slanted roof. And so

as the song goes you were wearing pink
pyjamas and smelled of a shower
as a cat smells of milk.

Sweet Squeezus! No cheap things to care for
but ourselves… Which accounts for the
Grim version of our story, whether coming

or going. Sudden snow surrounds us
like low-fat cereal
which doesn’t in the least matter. I’ve got

a snail curled in my mouth. Nothing better
to undo it than Camel 100′s. Millions sold yearly.
Just that once I tried to try you on.

splitheaded zombies
chaired in, hail the emperor
of correlatives