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Saints

 The poets listed here are no longer with us.  I was privileged to know and become friends with each of them. These poems and others to follow were published in Second Coming, which I edited and published from 1973-1989.

BOB KAUFMAN

Big Fanny & Stromin vinnie deal
all that's left of the largest colony
of the new world, who coulda guessed it
no one in his right mind

Poets don't sneak into zoos & talk with tigers anymore,
even though they read Blake & startle all by striped
devises, while those poems of God pout, lurking & sundried
             torn tree jungles
William Blake never saw a tiger & never fucked a lamb
you get off at fifty ninth street, forever

The first man was an idealist, but he died.
he couldn't survive the first truth,
discovering that the whole
world, all of it, was all his, he sat down
& with a little piece of string, & a shrap stone
invented suicide.

EUGENE RUGGLES

Night Visit

Something flew into my eye
just now as I walked into the fields,
the star bones protude overhead
through the night,
it is caught under my eyelid
like a tiny wheel
burying itself
deeper
until the movement stops,
I'm taking it with me
as the waters form
around it
it is dying
upon an eyeball,
what a strange enemy
and grave I must be
to this thing
that has flown into me,
trading its sight
for mine...
beneath us
the last crowds gazing upward
begin to disperse as the night dies,
the wings
move back from their balcony.

WILLIAM WANTLING

For Ernie Marshall
if he's still around

on the streets, he'd lived
the baddest western ever made
armed robbery every night
so often that nobody'd ever
heard of him, tho he made
Ring twice, the record book

Ernie, jealous of Oedipus
had three tragic flaws:
he was black
he was intelligent
he really loved to come

I knew him in San Quentin
every morning like prayer
shadow boxing in the Lower Yard
& he had this white kid who
hustled for them
O for a while it was Icecream
it was starched dungarees every
day, their jacket collars rolled
it was Paranoid Corner, sitting
in the Sun
also there was Bob, a crewcut
guard from Harlan County
used to dogeye Ernie every day
didn't like to see him handle
that kid
---What's a nigger doing with
somethin like that anyhow

every morning like prayer
Rage & Color don't mix

ED "foots" LIPMAN

the TV echoes
into my cell  I
can almost make
the words  at
count-time a man
shines a flashlight
thru steel bars

to reassure the
people (& the Warden)
that they got
this poet:

they got this poet
only by flashlight
they got this poet.

JACK MICHELINE

Zero Is Nothing

31 fish in a pond
30 gold
and one white
in the Oaklawn Sanitarium
in Hollywood
the original mind
keeps score
and fresh air
Executive 100
Aunt even money
Power 100
except for blackouts
Bullshit 75
Alcohol even money
Cosmetics and toys 88
Ass kissing 80
Poverty zero
Lorca not listed on charts
Baudelaire not listed
Hemingway 47
Mailer 32
Bukowski 27
Norse 12
Martin 3 1/2
Negroes even money
Power whites 5
Poetry 11
Dollar bill 100
Lawyers 96
Waitresses even money
Swindlers 91
Rat packs and cliques 82 1/2
Beggars 2
AT&T 183 4/5
Freaks 4 1/2
Horses 74
Flowers 91
Finks 87
Geniuses 100-1
America zero
Russia zero
China zero
Graveyards 88
Thieves 71
Mutation 1 1/2
Sushine 7
Pussy 69
Dreams zero
31 fish in a pond
30 gold
and one white
in the Oaklawn Sanitarium
in Hollywood
the original mind
keeps score
and fresh air
   --- Los Angeles 1970

CHARLES BUKOWSKI

The Priest And The Matador

in the slow Mexican air I watched the bull die
and they cut off his ear, and his great head held
no more  terror than a rock.

driving back the next day we stopped at the MIssion
and watched the golden red and blue flowers pulling
like tigers in the wind.

set this to metic: the bull, and the fort of Christ:
the matador on his knees, the dead bull his baby;
and the priest staring from the window
like a caged bear.
you may argue in the market place and pull at your
doubts with silken strings:  I will only tell you
this: I have lived in both their temples,
believing all and nothing -- perhaps, now, they will
die in mine.

NOEL PEATTIE

THE FLIGHT HOME

I want to board the plane that takes me Home.
Not just home, the place with the books and cat,
The tree, the driveway, the dust behind the door,
the mail, full of envelopes asking for money,
the anxiety, the drink, the chore, --
But the Home Country:

I hear the voice call, "Flight 999,
At last Airlines is ready for boarding."
Passengers, tired as I am, arise slowly,
Grasp their bags, hold out their boarding passes,
File into the huge plane, drop in their seats,
And feeling already much lighter,
Smile timidly around them;
For they are already halfway to
Home.

The music dies, the plane darkens, takes off.
The city rapidly disappears.  The flight attendants serve
     milk, wine,
Honey in water, and mead.  The plane drones on.
Nothing can be seen outside but enormous mountains
And a white cloudscape.
At last the plane descends, and cleaving the clouds
Sinks unexpectedly quietly down
Into the middlke of a green field.

The door opens, the stairs appear,
There is no one about.  Even the flight
Attendants have gone.

The field is green.  No airstrip, no pavement,
no buildings, no officials
This can only be Home.

CHARLES PRICE

Present Shock

The night time is waiting for me.
All over town, the bars are opening
and the drinks are being poured
so that I can gulp them down,
without waiting, when I come in.

The fantasies I build out of booze
insulate me like a padded cell
and in the dim light of the saloon
I can turn my face so the mirror
shows me younger than I am.

A man can go so far without love
until he loves his own pity.
Then the night
throws up fears that flummox him

A man can go so far until he feels
the money in his pants is,
like a whore's smile, unreal
and politics becomes the cop
in the paddy wagon
waiting for him to fall down.

So I stay in the bar, sipping
thinking of other toys than this glass;
it is warm in here, and the heavy door
shuts out the street noises,
shuts out the dark.