thank you

either peace or happiness,
let it enfold you.

when I was a young boy
I felt these things were
dumb, unsophisticated.
I had bad blood, a twisted
mind, a precarious
upbringing.

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 broke
things, smashed things,
walked through glass,
cursed.
I challenged everything,
was continually being
bothered, prodded,
in and out of fights,
in and out of my mind.
girls were something
to screw and rail
at, I had no male
friends,
I changed cliques and
cities, I hated holidays,
babies, history,
newspapers, museums,
grandmothers,
marriage, movies,
spiders, garbage men,
english accents, spain,
france, italy ,walnuts and
the color
orange.
algebra angered me,
opera sickened me,
charlie chaplin was a
fake
and flowers were for
pansies.

peace and happiness to me
were signs of
inferiority,
tenants of the weak,
an
addled
mind.

but as I went on with
my alley fights,
my suicidal years,
my passage through
any number of
girls-it gradually
began to occur to
me
that I wasn't different
from the others,
I was the same,

they were all fulsome
with hatred,
glossed over with petty
grievances,
the boys 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
empty,
darkness was the
dictator.

cautiously, I allowed
myself to feel good
at times.
I found moments of
peace in foreign rooms
just staring at the
knobs of some
dresser
or 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,
tenuous magic parts
open for the
asking.

I re-formulated
I don't remember when,
date, time, all
that
but the change
occurred.
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:
coffee cups lined up
behind a counter in a
cafe.
or a dog walking along
a sidewalk.
or the way the mouse
on the 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 girlfriend.

I am sorry for him
he is caught.

I walk onto the blazing
sunshine.
the whole day is
mine
temporarily, anyhow.

(the whole world is at the
throat of the world,
everybody feels angry,
short-changed, cheated,
everybody is despondent,
disillusioned)

I welcomed shots of
peace, tattered shards of
happiness.

I embraced that stuff
like the hottest number,
like high heels, breasts,
singing, the works.

(there is such a thing as cockeyed optimism
that overlooks all
basic problems just for
the sake of itself-
this is a
shield and a
sickness.)

The knife got near my
throat
again,
I almost turned on the
gas
again
but when the good
moments arrived
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
only average,
I now liked what
I saw, almost
handsome, yes,
a bit ripped and
ragged,
but not too bad,
not the face
of a rockstar
butthe face of
a boy
with a heart,
a boy you
showed could
have a heart.

and finally I discovered
real feelings of
others,
unheralded,
like lately,
like this evening,
as we were leaving
for the movie,
I saw you sitting,
just the
shape of
your head there
(not forgetting
centuries of the living
and the
dead and the dying,
the pyramids,
Mozart dead
but his music still
there on the
street, weeds growing,
the earth turning,
the tote board waiting for
me)
I saw the shape of your head,
so still,
I ached for your life,
just being there
sitting with your friend
at dinner.

I wanted to kiss you
on the
forehead,
take your hand,
go out of that booth,
go outside,
go into my marvelous
car,
fix the seatbelt,
back out of the
lot,
feeling warm from
my fingertips
down to my
foot on the gas
pedal,
I’d enter the world
once more,
drive down the
road
past the restaurants
full and empty
of
people,
I’d see a policeman,
honk,
and watch him wave
back at
me.