North

1

December 1960 Minneapolis
15 degrees 6am darkness
8th in line Manpower Inc
looking for a day's work
unload trucks scrub floors anything
stomach eating itself head dizzy
the man in front of me
old as my father says
kid this your first day shit
I been here six days runnin
hitched up from El Paso
worked two days so far
shovelin snow hard fuckin work
piece of Chinese schrapnel in my head
gets to hurtin
the gummint pays me some disability
I ain't askin charity
I just want a room a warm room
sit next to the radiator keep warm
when I'm warm the head don't hurt
come Spring
got a daughter in Seattle
go see her maybe
if the river was whiskey
and I was a duck
I'd dive to the bottom
and suck it all up
kid you look bad you gonna
faint or what
here have a smoke
shit this ain't cold Korea was cold
lost three toes but I'm here
I'm a lucky man
here look at this
it's my lucky charm
a Chinese ear
a fuckin Chinese ear.

2

In the Plaza on a bench
in the high clear air in Ayacucho
after a terror filled ride
along high cliffs from Huancayo

a fat man in khaki
black gun in a black hip holster
walks up
says
you leave in the morning
there's a plane to Lima
I'll take you to the ticket office
now
let's go

the plane's an old DC3
the pilot maybe 18
the plane rattles along a grass runway
lined on both sides with indigenies
rattles along a quarter mile half mile a mile
the runway ends abruptly
it's a mesa the mesa ends we're airborne
12,000 feet in an instant
the copilot maybe 17 walks back
with a bag of oxygen
I was passing out
the plane couldn't get airspeed
there's not enough oxygen up there.

3

Don't blame me
blame the little prick
with the guitar
he let you go

don't blame me
blame the doctor
he botched the operation

don't blame me blame your father
he walked me into his study
closed the door
promised an easy life
if I married you

don't blame me
a lost kid full of dreams
I had miles to go

the little prick
now everybody knows his face
he owns a thousand guitars
many years have fled
I still don't understand love

I'll accept blame I'll accept it
like I accept blame for
earthquakes hurricanes war
for doomed starving populations
the rings of Saturn.

4

Near San Berdoo an El Dorado
screeched down leaving rubber
the driver crewcut drunk or high
he'd lifted it in LA
we made him drop us
before the Nevada line
if we'd crossed with him
we'd still be doing time

near Albuquerque
coming out of sleep in a field
a waist high mist blanketing the grasses
we couldn't see our boots

into St Paul the stockyards at dawn
with ten thousand bellowing hogs
waiting on a bloody death
Minneapolis, Dinkytown
the kindness of sorority girls

in Carolina
a cruising ambulance stopped
rode us ninety miles
stretched out in the back

franks two for a quarter on 42nd St
walking up from Bleecker
in the cold rain and snow
the cold rain and snow
talking up the hookers
we couldn't afford

22 years gone quicker
than a flash of lightning
over night hills

they said your face was mostly scabs
when you met your overdose
on the sidewalk outside the Chelsea

who knows where the road will lead

tall horses restless in their stalls.

5

In the Mills Hotel on Bleeker St
buck and a quarter a night cell
drinking red wine
three months straight
legal pad and pencil on the table

quart of vodka a night
sleeping on the sidewalk
in the car in the bushes
shakes in the morning
had to get a shot down

the sky is clear
the ocean warm
rent paid and I'm
a few bucks ahead
no drink in 12 years
it ain't bad

6

Black haired beauty
still radiant at 50
after long years
you come in the room
and say I'm living just like

MacDougal Street days
desktop on milk crates
little food few clothes no money
teeth in need of repair
head full of a strange mechanics

Miss Rheingold
your exquisitely chiseled face
postered in the subway
smiles down at me
delighted to be your lover.

7

He spotted me
getting out of the car
at the post office and
ran across the parking lot

could I spare a dollar
for a phone call home
Baltimore Maryland, he said

I gave him 3 dollars
he thanked me his
eyes on the bills

he'd been through town a year ago
I'd given him a dollar then
for the same phone call

I gave it to him because
I'd been on the road
hungry and friendless
dirty for want of a shower
sore from sleeping under bridges
people looking the other way
the horizon close and bleak

I wanted to tell him it would get better
because it got better for me
but I didn't.

It doesn't always
work that way.

It was his business and
I'd been getting mail lately.