Collected Poems

TO A FRIENDLY DUN

4And another thing. I still owe you that five dollars you gave me that evening in St. Paul. Why did you do it, Ray? I wasn't even hungry. TO A FRIENDLY DUN i. A man owes me two hundred and fifty dollars. And I would rather be dead than ask him To pay me back. 2. He knows Who he is. One afternoon in Minneapolis, I slogged over the Tenth Avenue bridge, I slogged upstairs At Seven Corners, I had money enough To climb the bitter dead In the black snow. 3The snow rotted down The black river, the love Died in my heart as I Slogged up the rotten Stair. My friend said all I got is relief meat and maybe a little more Bean soup and Let's go see, because I'm hungry too. 4And so was I. I drank, I ate. I had some three hundred dollars in the bank. At that time, all I knew NEW POEMS 2OI Was the rotting slit of my body. I was dying, and my friend was hungry. I took that fifty bucks left over And got the hell Out. 5Now three years have gone, and I have succeeded in deluding My real body into believing it will not die. Cold, cold, and the snow blackens into the veins Of my city, my love, my dark city, the ocean of Darkness, where we are all Lonely together. My veins Gag in my body, I love my body As my brothers love their own Veins gagging into the loneliness that is Only my own life: not much, I guess, But it is all alone, and I love it. It may go drifting face down down the Hudson, Dead in its own darkness, but it will go drifting dead In its own darkness. This morning I shared Ten dollars with a man. Not my loneliness, which I cannot share. Just ten bucks, which I hope he will never fear He has to pay me back. 6. A man who charges his brother money to save his brother's soul Is scum. You are scum. I paid you. 7I wash my hands. 202 ...