we have everything and we have nothing. some do it well enough for a while and then give way. fame gets them or disgust or age or lack of proper diet or ink across the eyes or children in college or new cars or broken backs while skiing in Switzerland or new politics or new wives or just natural change and decay – the man you knew yesterday hooking for ten rounds or drinking for three days and three nights by the Sawtooth mountains now just something under a sheet or a cross or a stone or under an easy delusion, or packing a bible or a golf bag or a briefcase: how they go, how they go! — all the ones you thought would never go.
days like this. like your day today.
[…]
what do you see today? what is it? where are you? the best days are sometimes the first, sometimes the middle and even sometimes the last. the vacant lots are not bad, churches in Europe on postcards are not bad. people in wax museums frozen into their best sterility are not bad, horrible but not bad. the cannon, think of the cannon, and toast for breakfast the coffee hot enough you know your tongue is still there, three geraniums outside a window, trying to be red and trying to be pink and trying to be geraniums, no wonder sometimes the women cry, no wonder the mules don’t want to go up the hill.
[…]
one more good day. a little bit of it.
[…]
enough and not enough. arcs and pilgrims, oranges gutters, ferns, antibodies, boxes of tissue paper.
in the most decent sometimes sun there is the softsmoke feeling from urns and the canned sound of old battleplanes and if you go inside and run your finger along the window ledge you’ll find dirt, maybe even earth. and if you look out the window there will be the day, and as you get older you’ll keep looking keep looking sucking your tongue in a little ah ah no no maybe
[…]
we have everything and we have nothing.
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Fragmentos del poema: Something For The Touts, The Nuns, The Grocery Clerks, And You…
terminar sozinho no túmulo de um quarto sem cigarros nem bebida- careca como uma lâmpada, barrigudo, grisalho, e feliz por ter um quarto. ...de manhã eles estão lá fora ganhando dinheiro: juízes, carpinteiros, encanadores , médicos, jornaleiros, guardas, barbeiros, lavadores de carro, dentistas, floristas, garçonetes, cozinheiros, motoristas de táxi... e você se vira para o lado pra pegar o sol nas costas e não direto nos olhos.