Either peace or happiness, let it enfold you
when i was a young man I felt these things were dumb, unsophisticated. I had bad blood, a twisted mind, a pecarious up bringing.
I was hard as granite, I leered at the sun. I trusted no man and especially no woman.
I was living a hell in small rooms, I broket things, smashed things, walked through glass, cursed. I challenged everything, was
continually being evicted, jailed, in and out of fights, in and a out of my mind. Women were something to screw and rail at, i had no
male freinds,
I changed jobs and cities, I hated holidays, babies, history, newspapers, museums, grandmothers, marriage, movies, spiders,
garbagemen, english accents, spain, france, italy, walnuts and the color orange. algebra angred me, opera sickened me, charlie chaplin
was a fake and flowers were for pansies.
peace an happiness to me were signs of infeority, tenants of the weak and dead mind.
but as I went on with my alley fights, my suicidal years, my passage through any number of women-it gradually began to occur to me
that I wasn't diffrent from the others, I was the same, they were all fulsome with hatred, glossed over with petty greivances, the men
I fought in alleys had hearts of stone. everybody was nudging, inching, cheating for some insignificant advantage, the lie was the
weapon and the plot was emptey, darkness was the dictator.
cautiously, I allowed myself to feel good at times. I found moments of peace in cheap rooms just staring at the knobs of some
dresseror listening to the rain in the dark. the less i needed the better i felt.
maybe the other life had worn me down. I no longer found glamour in topping somebody in conversation. or in mounting the body of some
poor drunken female whose life had slipped away into sorrow.
I could never accept life as it was, i could never gobble down all its poisons but there were parts, tenous magic parts open for the
asking.
I re-formulated I don't know when, date, time, all that but the change occured. something in me relaxed, smoothed out. i no longer had
to prove that i was a man,
I didn't have to prove anything.
I began to see things: coffe cups lined up behind a counter in a cafe. or a dog walking along a sidewalk. or the way the mouse on my
dresser top stopped there with its body, its ears, its nose, it was fixed, a bit of life caught within itself and its eyes looked at
me and they were beautiful. then it was gone.
I began to feel good, I began to feel good in the worst situations and there were plenty of those. like say, the boss behind his desk,
he is going to have to fire me.
I've missed too many days. he is dressed in a suit, necktie, glasses, he says, "i am going to have to let you go"
"it's all-right" i tell him.
He must do what he must do, he has a wife, a house, children, expenses, most probably a girlfreind.
I am sorry for him he is caught.
I walk onto the blazing sunshine. the whole day is mine temporailiy, anyhow.
(the whole world is at thet hroat of the world, everybody feels angry, short-changed, cheated, everybody is despondent,
dissillusioned)
I welcomed shots of peace, tattered shards of happiness.
I embraced that stuff like the hottest number, like high heels, breasts, singing, the works.
(dont get me wrong,there is such a thing as cockeyed optimism that overlooks all basic problems just for the sake of itself-this is a
sheild and a sickness.)
The knife got near my throat again, I almost turned on the gas again but when the good moments arrived again I didn't fight them off
like an alley adversary. I let them take me, i luxuriated in them, I bade them welcome home. I even looked into the mirror once having
thought myself to be ugly ,I now liked what I saw, almost handsome, yes,a bit ripped and ragged, scares,lumps, odd turns, but all in
all, not too bad, almost handsome, better at least than some of those movie star faces like the cheeks of a babys butt.
and finally I discovered real feelings foothers, unhearleded, like latley, like this morning, as I was leaving, for the track,i saw my
wife in bed, just the shape of her head there (not for getting centuries of the living and the dead and the dying, the pyarimids,
Mozart is dead but his music still there in the room, weeds growing,the earth turning, the toteboard waiting for me) I saw the shape
of my wife's head, she so still, i ached for her life, just being ther eunder the covers.
i kissed her in the forehead, got down the stairway, got outside, got into my marvelous car, fixed the seatbelt, backed out the drive.
feeling warm to the fingertips, down to my foot on the gas pedal, I entered the world once more, drove down the hill past the houses
full and emptey of people, i saw the mailman, honked, he waved back at me.
