28 Addiction poems

The towels rot and disgust me on this damp peninsula where they invented mist and drug abuse and taught the light to fade, where my top-quality and rock-bottom heart cried because I'll never get to kiss your famous knees again in a room made vague by throwing a scarf over a lamp. Things get pretty radical in the dark: the sailboats on the inlet sail away; the provinces of actuality crawl on the sea; the dusk now tenderly ministers to the fallen parking lots— the sunset instananeous on the fenders, memory and peace . . . the grip of chaos . . .

I wish we could control this revolting want of control: these people with their spongy eyes, their mouths of trembling shoehorns, billhooks for penises and bear traps for vulvas. One taste of sunlight and at once they can’t do without it. Water, the same, and food, and air, and a dozen other squalid habits. Some—like their copulation, a rusting carnation in a cut-glass neck— are not physically compulsive but the partners can’t stop wanting them to be: so we desire to be raped by love, who would fill us, they say, with an oil from the lit braziers of stars. What if, doing it every day, we resemble pistons, and the slow poison cuts our lives off at 70: it’s the grim determination of our passion. And beyond this, even I— defended in childhood by my strong father the piano and my mother the virtuoso from knuckles among warehouses—even I am addicted to the mild light of words.

When the junkies my father sold crack to got too close to me, he told them to back up six dicks’ lengths. This is the man who when I was seven caught me under the bed crying and said: Save those tears. You’ll need them later. The man who told me he smoked crack because he liked it, the man sitting on his couch now watching the History Channel, scratching the nub beneath his knee where his leg used to be, gumming plums, his false teeth soaking in vinegar on the table. I’m sitting across the room trying to conjure each version he’s shown of himself, trying to lie in water warm enough to soak away the switch he hit me with. To help me summon love for the man who just asked me if he can borrow 200 dollars, the man who once told me:Wish in one hand, then shit in the other, and see which one fills up the quickest.

‘Be not among wine-bibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh; for the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty; and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.’ Proverbs, 23: 20, 21 I’ll tell you two fortunes, my fine little lad, For you to accept or refuse. The one of them good, and the other one bad; Now hear them, and say which you choose! I see by my gift, within reach of your hand, A fortune right fair to behold; A house and a hundred good acres of land, With harvest fields yellow as gold. I see a great orchard, the boughs hanging down With apples of russet and red; I see droves of cattle, some white and brown, But all of them sleek and well-fed. I see doves and swallows about the barn doors, See the fanning-mill whirling so fast, See men that are threshing the wheat on the floors; And now the bright picture is past! And I see, rising dismally up in the place Of the beautiful house and the land, A man with a fire-red nose on his face, And a little brown jug in his hand! Oh! if you beheld him, my lad, you would wish That he were less wretched to see; For his boot-toes, they gape like the mouth of a fish, And his trousers are out at the knee! In walking he staggers, now this way, now that, And his eyes they stand out like a bug’s, And he wears an old coat and a battered-in hat, And I think that the fault is the jug’s! For our text says the drunkard shall come to be poor, And drowsiness clothes men with rags; And he doesn’t look much like a man, I am sure, Who has honest hard cash in his bags. Now which will you choose? to be thrifty and snug, And to be right side up with your dish; Or to go with your eyes like the eyes of a bug, And your shoes like the mouth of a fish!

Down by the pond, addicts sleep on rocky grass half in water, half out, and there the moon lights them out of tawny silhouettes into the rarest of amphibious flowers I once heard called striders, between, but needing, two worlds. Of what can you accuse them now, beauty?

Farewell to the starlight in whiskey, So long to the sunshine in beer. The booze made me cocky and frisky But worried the man in the mirror. Goodnight to the moonlight in brandy, Adieu to the warmth of the wine. I think I can finally stand me Without a glass or a stein. Bye-bye to the balm in the vodka, Ta-ta to the menthol in gin. I'm trying to do what I ought to, Rejecting that snake medicine. I won't miss the blackouts and vomit, The accidents and regret. If I can stay off the rotgut, There might be a chance for me yet. So so long to God in a bottle, To the lies of rum and vermouth. Let me slake my thirst with water And the sweet, transparent truth.

Kurt, early twenties. Met him after an AA meeting in Silverlake (November, eighty-five). I remem- ber standing with him up- stairs, in the clubhouse, how I checked his body out. But not who approached whom. Or what we talked about before we leaned against my car and kissed, under that tarnished L.A. moon. Drove to my place and un- dressed him in the dark. He was smaller than me. I couldn’t keep my hands off his ass. Next morning, smoked till he woke, took him back. He thanked me sweetly. I couldn’t have said what I wanted, though must have known. Drove home and put him in a poem ("November") I was at the end of. Later that day it rained (I know from the poem).

I sit in Lees. At 11:40 PM with Jimmy the pusher. He teaches me Ju Ju. Hot on the table before us shrimp foo yong, rice and mushroom chow yuke. Up the street under the wheels of a strange car is his stash—The ritual. We make it. And have made it. For months now together after midnight. Soon I know the fuzz will interrupt, will arrest Jimmy and I shall be placed on probation. The poem does not lie to us. We lie under its law, alive in the glamour of this hour able to enter into the sacred places of his dark people, who carry secrets glassed in their eyes and hide words under the coats of their tongue. 6.16.58

in Fort Wayne I drank the seniors Old Milwaukee Old Crow         in Indianapolis I stopped         now I regret every drink I never took        all around          coffee grounds and eggshells      this sweating         a mouthful of  lime        as a boy I stole a mint green bra from a laundromat       I took it home to try on while my parents slept       filled its cups with the smallest turnips in our pantry       the underwire grew into me like a strangler fig       my blood roiled then as now       back on earth frogspit is dripping down wild aloe spikes       salmon are bullying their way upstream       there is a pond I leapt into once with a lonely blonde boy       when we scampered out one of us was in love      I could not be held responsible for desire       he could not be held at all     I wonder where he is now       if he looked up he might see me      a sparkling     I always hoped that when I died I would know why        my brother will be so sad      he will tell his daughter I was better than I was     he will leave out my crueldrunk nights       the wet mattresses      my driving alone into cornfields unsure whether I’d drive out       I wish he were here now        he could be here      this cave is big enough for everyone        look at all the diamonds

Chemical angels ride into this vacant room as walls and windows drip away into western fronts, post depression farm boundaries barely barb-wired together, enclosed stone pile pastures a gray horse standing still, facing north, a snort of breath drifting to a rail car passing horizon the wind hinting the spirit of ice nights so long you can only hope the red blood circling for warmth in your cells don’t freeze here with the rest of this lost American dream.