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******

I don’t know how many bottles of beer
I have consumed while waiting for things
to get better.
I don’t know how much wine and whiskey
and beer
mostly beer
I have consumed after
splits with women—
waiting for the phone to ring
waiting for the sound of footsteps,
and the phone never rings
until much later
and the footsteps never arrive
until much later.
when my stomach is coming up
out of my mouth
they arrive as
fresh as spring flowers:
“what the hell have you done to yourself?
it will be 3 days before you can fuck me!”
the female is durable
she lives seven and one half years longer
than the male, and she drinks very little beer
because she knows it’s bad for the
figure.
while we are going mad
they are out
dancing and laughing
with horny cowboys.
well, there’s beer
sacks and sacks
of empty beer bottles
and when you pick one up
the bottles fall through the wet bottom
of the paper sack
rolling
clanking
spilling grey wet ash
and stale beer,
or the sacks fall over at 4 a.m.
in the morning
making the only sound in your life.
beer
rivers and seas of beer
beer beer beer
the radio singing love songs
as the phone remains silent
and the walls stand
straight up and down
and beer is all there is.

******

XVI
I have my figures ready for the
6th race
then I look up
and see, well,
there in the stands ahead of
me
a fellow sits upright.
his face is smooth and
bland.
the physiognomy is set at
absolute zero.
he has a yellow pencil.
he flips it over
once
into the air and
catches it with
one hand.
he does it
again
and again
with the same
timing.
what is he
doing?
he just sits there
and continues to
repeat the
maneuver.
I begin to
count:
one two three
four five six…
23, 24, 25, 26,
27…
his movements are
dull and graceless,
he reminds me of a
factory machine.
this man is my enemy.
45, 46, 47, 48…
his face has the
taut dead skin
of a mounted
ape
and I am sitting
with my two-day
two-night
hangover
watching…
53, 54, 55…
this will be my
life in hell: watching
men like that
sitting forever
tossing and
catching pencils
with one
hand
in that same
non-innovational
rhythm…
I am in vertigo.
I feel a pressing
at the temples
as if I was going
mad.
I can’t watch
any longer.
I get up and walk
away from the
seating section
as I think,
it will never
let go
with the women
you live with
or wherever you
go, supermarkets,
bazaars, hang-glider
meets, it will
find you, maul you,
piss over you, let
you know
about it
again.
and there will be
nobody
you can talk to
about it.

******

XIV
driving in for a wash and
wax with nothing to do but light a cigarette and
stand in the sun…no rent, no trouble…
hiding from the whores…
…here it comes, glistening black, you tip the man
50 cents, get in, yank up the aerial, adjust side mirror,
start it, turn the radio classical, steer it out
into the streets…
open sun roof, take the slow lane, hangover lessening,
now sleepy in the sun…you’re there…
the parking lot attendants know you: “hey, Champ,
how’s it going?”
inside, you open the Form, decide to have a day
with the runners…already you’ve
spotted two low-
price sucker bets in the first race that will not
win—that’s all you need, an edge…
“Hank…”
it’s somebody behind you, you turn, it’s your old
factory buddy, Spencer Bishop.
“hey, Spence…”
“hey, man, I hear you been fooling the people, I
hear you been going around to the universities and
giving lectures…”
“that’s right, my man…”
“what are you going to do when they find you out?”
“I’ll go back to the factory…”
you go to your seat and watch them come out for the
post parade.
you could be painting, or in the botanical gardens…
the 6 looks good in the Form and in the flesh…
7/2 is not the world but it’s over a third.
you get up and move toward the windows.
the screenplay is finished, you’re into the 4th
novel, the poems keep arriving…not much with
the short story but that’s waiting, fixing itself
up, that whore is getting ready.
“ten-win-six,” you say to the teller.
it’s the beginning of a most pleasant afternoon.
my next lecture will be
The Positive Influences
of Gambling
as a Means of
Defining Reality as
Something that
Can Be Touched Like
a Book of Matches or
a Soup Spoon
yes, you think, going back to sit down,
it’s true.

******

VIII
I pay my way in, find a seat far from everybody, sit down.
I have seven or eight good quiet minutes, then I hear a
movement: a young man has seated himself near me, not next
to me but one seat away, although there are hundreds of
empty seats elsewhere.
another Mickey Mouse, I think. why do they always need
me?
I keep working at my figures.
then I hear his voice: “Blue Baron will take the first
race.”
I make a note to scratch that dog and then I look up and
it seems that this remark is directed to me: there’s
nobody else within fifty yards.
I see his face.
he has a face women would love: utterly bland and
blank.
he has remained untouched by circumstance,
a miracle of zero.
even I gaze on him, enchanted:
it’s like looking at an endless lake of milk
never rippled by even a pebble.
I look back down at my Form.
“who do you like?” he asks.
“sir,” I tell him, “I’d prefer not to talk.”
he looks at me from behind his perfectly trimmed black moustache,
there is not one hair longer than the other or out of place;
I’ve tried moustaches; I’ve never cared enough for mirrors
to keep something that unnatural.
he says, “my buddy told me about you. he says you don’t talk
to anybody.”
I get up, take my papers three rows down and sixteen seats
over, I take out my set
of red rubber earplugs, jam them in.
I feel for the lonely, I sense their need, but I also feel
that they should all
comfort each other and leave me alone.
so, plugs in, I miss the flag raising ceremony, being deep
into the Form.
I would like to be human
if they would only let me.

******

V
my women of the past keep trying to locate me.
I duck into dark closets and pull the
overcoats
about.
at the racetrack I sit in my clubhouse seat
smoking cigarette after cigarette
watching the horses come out for the post parade
and looking over my shoulder.
I go to bet—this one’s ass looks like that one’s
ass used to.
I duck away from her.
that one’s hair might have her under it.
I get the hell out of the clubhouse and go
to the grandstand to bet.
I don’t want a return of any of the past.
I don’t want a return of any of those glorious
ladies of my past,
I don’t want to try again, I don’t want to see
them again even in silhouette;
I gave them all, gave all of them to all the other
men in the world, they can have the darlings,
the tits the asses the thighs the minds
and their mothers and fathers and sisters and
brothers and children and dogs and x-boy friends
and present boy friends, they can have them and
fuck them and hang them
upsidedown.
I was a terrible and a jealous man who mistreated
them and it’s best that they are with you
for you will be better to them and I will be
better to myself
and when they phone me or write me or leave
messages
I will send them all to you
my fine fellows
I don’t deserve what you have and I want to
keep it that way.

******

A Love Poem

all the women
all their kisses the
different ways they love and
talk and need.
their ears they all have
ears and
throats and dresses
and shoes and
automobiles and ex-
husbands.
mostly
the women are very
warm they remind me of
buttered toast with the butter
melted
in.
there is a look in the
eye: they have been
taken they have been
fooled. I don’t quite know what to
do for
them.
I am
a fair cook a good
listener
but I never learned to
dance—I was busy
then with larger things.
but I’ve enjoyed their different
beds
smoking cigarettes
staring at the
ceilings. I was neither vicious nor
unfair. only
a student.
I know they all have these
feet and barefoot they go across the floor as
I watch their bashful buttocks in the
dark. I know that they like me, some even
love me
but I love very
few.
some give me oranges and vitamin pills;
others talk quietly of
childhood and fathers and
landscapes; some are almost
crazy but none of them are without
meaning; some love
well, others not
so; the best at sex are not always the
best in other
ways; each has limits as I have
limits and we learn
each other
quickly.
all the women all the
women all the
bedrooms
the rugs the
photos the
curtains, it’s
something like a church only
at times there’s
laughter.
those ears those
arms those
elbows those eyes
looking, the fondness and
the wanting I have been
held I have been
held.

******

Sparks

the factory off Santa Fe Ave. was
best.
we packed heavy lighting fixtures into
long heavy boxes
then flipped the boxes into stacks
six high.
then the loaders would
come by
clear your table and
you’d go for the next six.
ten hour day
four on Saturday
the pay was union
pretty good for unskilled labor
and if you didn’t come in
with muscles
you got them soon enough
most of us in
white t-shirts and jeans
cigarettes dangling
sneaking beers
management looking
the other way
not many whites
the whites didn’t last:
lousy workers
mostly Mexicans and
blacks
cool and mean
now and then
a blade flashed
or somebody got
punched-out
management looking
the other way
the few whites who lasted
were crazy
the work got done
and the young Mexican girls
kept us
cheerful and hoping
their eyes flashing
messages
from the
assembly line.
I was one of the
crazy whites
who lasted
I was a good worker
just for the rhythm of it
just for the hell of it
and after ten hours
of heavy labor
after exchanging insults
living through skirmishes
with those not cool enough to
abide
we left
still fresh
we climbed into our old
automobiles to
go to our places
to drink half the night
to fight with our women
to return the next morning
to punch in
knowing we were
suckers
making the rich
richer
we swaggered
in our white t-shirts and
jeans
gliding past
the young Mexican girls
we were mean and perfect
for what we were
hungover
we could
damn well
do the job
but
it didn’t touch us
ever
those filthy peeling walls
the sound of drills and
cutting blades
the sparks
we were some gang
in that death ballet
we were magnificent
we gave them
better than they asked
yet
we gave them
nothing.

******

the last generation

it was much easier to be a genius in the twenties, there were
only 3 or 4 literary magazines and if you got into them
4 or 5 times you could end up in Gertie’s parlor
you could possibly meet Picasso for a glass of wine, or
maybe only Miró.
and yes, if you sent your stuff postmarked from Paris
chances of publication became much better.
most writers bottomed their manuscripts with the
word “Paris” and the date.
and with a patron there was time to
write, eat, drink and take drives to Italy and sometimes
Greece.
it was good to be photo’d with others of your kind
it was good to look tidy, enigmatic and thin.
photos taken on the beach were great.
and yes, you could write letters to the 15 or 20
others
bitching about this and that.
you might get a letter from Ezra or from Hem; Ezra liked
to give directions and Hem liked to practice his writing
in his letters when he couldn’t do the other.
it was a romantic grand game then, full of the fury of
discovery.
now
now there are so many of us, hundreds of literary magazines,
hundreds of presses, thousands of titles.
who is to survive out of all this mulch?
it’s almost improper to ask.
I go back, I read the books about the lives of the boys
and girls of the twenties.
if they were the Lost Generation, what would you call us?
sitting here among the warheads with our electric-touch
typewriters?
the Last Generation?
I’d rather be Lost than Last but as I read these books about
them
I feel a gentleness and a generosity
as I read of the suicide of Harry Crosby in his hotel room
with his whore
that seems as real to me as the faucet dripping now
in my bathroom sink.
I like to read about them: Joyce blind and prowling the
bookstores like a tarantula, they said.
Dos Passos with his clipped newscasts using a pink type-
writer ribbon.
D. H. horny and pissed-off, H. D. being smart enough to use
her initials which seemed much more literary than Hilda
Doolittle.
G. B. Shaw, long established, as noble and
dumb as royalty, flesh and brain turning to marble. a
bore.
Huxley promenading his brain with great glee, arguing
with Lawrence that it wasn’t in the belly and the balls,
that the glory was in the skull.
and that hick Sinclair Lewis coming to light.
meanwhile
the revolution being over, the Russians were liberated and
dying.
Gorky with nothing to fight for, sitting in a room trying
to find phrases praising the government.
many others broken in victory.
now
now there are so many of us
but we should be grateful, for in a hundred years
if the world is not destroyed, think, how much
there will be left of all of this:
nobody really able to fail or to succeed—just
relative merit, diminished further by
our numerical superiority.
we will all be catalogued and filed.
all right…
if you still have doubts of those other golden
times
there were other curious creatures: Richard
Aldington, Teddy Dreiser, F. Scott, Hart Crane, Wyndham
Lewis, the
Black Sun Press.
but to me, the twenties centered mostly on Hemingway
coming out of the war and beginning to type.
it was all so simple, all so deliciously clear
now
there are so many of us.
Ernie, you had no idea how good it had been
four decades later when you blew your brains into
the orange juice
although
I grant you
that was not your best work.

******

talking to my mailbox…

boy, don’t come around here telling me you
can’t cut it, that
they’re pitching you low and inside, that
they are conspiring against you,
that all you want is a chance but they won’t
give you a
chance.
boy, the problem is that you’re not doing
what you want to do, or
if you’re doing what you want to do, you’re
just not doing it
well.
boy, I agree:
there’s not much opportunity, and there are
some at the top who are
not doing much better than you
are
but
you’re wasting energy haranguing and
bitching.
boy, I’m not advising, just suggesting that
instead of sending your poems to me
along with your letters of
complaint
you should enter the
arena—
send your work to the editors and
publishers, it will
buck up your backbone and your
versatility.
boy, I wish to thank you for the
praise for some of my
published works
but that
has nothing to do with
anything and won’t help a
purple shit, you’ve just got to
learn to hit that low, hard
inside pitch.
this is a form letter
I send to almost everybody, but
I hope you take it
personally,
man.

******

some of my readers

I liked it coming out of that expensive
cafe in Germany
that rainy night
some of the ladies had learned that I
was in there
and as I walked out well-fed and
intoxicated
the ladies waved
placards
and screamed at me
but all I recognized was my
name.
I asked a German friend what they were
saying.
“they hate you,” he told me,
“they belong to the German Female
Liberation Movement…”
I stood and watched them, they were
beautiful and screaming, I
loved them all, I laughed, waved,
blew them kisses.
then my friend, my publisher and my
girlfriend got me into the car; the
engine started, the windshield wipers
began thrashing
and as we drove off in the rain
I looked back
watched them standing in that
terrible weather
waving their placards and their
fists.
it was nice to be recognized
in the country of my birth, that
was what mattered
most…

back at the hotel room
opening bottles of wine
with my friends
I missed them,
those angry wet
passionate ladies
of the night.

******

the troops

World War II
I was 21
riding a bus to
New Orleans
there were many
army men
on that
bus
there were only
2
young men
not in
uniform
a red-haired
fellow and
me.
the red-haired
fellow
kept explaining
his
position to the
army
boys:
“Jesus, you’ve
got to
believe me, I
want to be with
you guys
but I can’t
go, I’ve got a
bad
heart!”
“that’s all
right,” they
told him.
I didn’t need
a
confessional,
I needed a
savior.
I pulled out
my pint,
had a
nip, looked
out the
window…
it was
getting into
evening
when the bus
was
stopped
at the edge
of the
desert
by some more
soldiers
some soldiers
stood outside
as 2 entered
the bus
they heavily
trudged
along
nerve-endings
of order and
disorder
they asked
each passenger:
“where were
you
born?”
it appeared
that 9-tenths of
the bus
were born in
the
midwest
and when
my turn
came
I said,
“Pasadena,
California.”
“where ya
going?”
“funeral, my
brother
died.”
they moved
further
down in
the bus
and
came upon
an old
man—
“where were
you
born?”
“I don’t
think,” the
old man
answered,
“that’s any
of your
business.”
“Sir, I
asked you,
‘where were
you born?’”
“this is a
democracy, I
don’t have
to answer
that
question.”
“you son
of a bitch!”
the soldier
grabbed the
old man
by the
back of
his
coat
lifted him
from his
seat
and
they dragged
the
old man
down the
aisle
and out
the
front door
of the
bus.
the bus
stood
there
and we all
looked out
the window
as a group of
soldiers
surrounded
him
we heard:
“we’re takin’
you in!”
“but I’ve
got my
baggage on
the
bus!”
“fuck
your
baggage!”
then a
soldier
motioned
to the bus
driver
the
bus door
closed
and the bus
drove
off.
evening
quickly became
night
everybody was
silent for a
while
then the red-
haired
fellow
started it
up
again:
“listen, I
really want
to go
to this
war, I’d
just give
anything if
I didn’t have
this
bad
heart.”
the bus
just kept on
going.

******

on being 20

my mother knocked on my roominghouse door
and came in
looked in the dresser drawer:
“Henry you don’t have any clean
stockings?
do you change your underwear?”
“Mom, I don’t want you poking around in
here…”
“I hear that there is a woman
who comes to your room late at
night and she drinks with you, she lives
right down the hall.”
“she’s all right…”
“Henry, you can get a terrible
disease.”
“yeah…”
“I talked with your landlady, she’s a
nice lady, she says you must read a lot
of books in bed because as you fall to sleep at
night the books fall to the floor,
they can hear it all over the
house, heavy books, one at midnight,
another at one a.m., another at 2 a.m.,
another at four.”
after she left I took the library books
back
returned to the roominghouse and
put the dirty stockings and the dirty
underwear and the dirty shirts into
the paper suitcase
took the streetcar downtown
boarded the Trailways bus to
New Orleans
figuring to arrive with ten dollars
and let them do with me
what they would.
they did.

******

too late

I was a slow developer.
I got good too late:
high school was over,
it was summer
with no job
and my father looking
at me over the plates
at mealtime.
during the day I’d
hang around the lots:
“hey, anybody want to
play football? baseball?”
now and then I’d get
a few guys and then
I’d look good:
I could powder the ball
better than anybody,
I could make impossible
graceful catches over my
shoulder.
at football
I was the best broken-
field runner in the
neighborhood—
I laughed at them
while
dodging past
while the young girls
and neighborhood people
applauded my
mastery.
but the guys didn’t
want to play
anymore: “listen, Hank,
we’ve got things to
do.
why didn’t you
go out for the teams
while you were still
in school?”
then they’d leave
and the people would
leave and I would be
standing in the vacant
lot
alone.
then I’d go
back to the house
and
back to my father
watching me over his
dinner plate:
“well, son, what did you
do today? did you find
a job?”
he should have seen me
with all the young girls
screaming.
he just didn’t know
who he was
sitting at the table
with.

******

on and off the road

flying into a strange town, being met at the
airport by a student, then demanding to know
where is the nearest bar
getting the drinks down while waiting for the
luggage
then
being driven to the hotel, first demanding to
be let off at the nearest liquor store
later in the hotel room, switching on the tv,
getting into bed with the bottle, thinking, I
don’t have to read until tomorrow night
then
drinking that night away…

on stage with another bottle, insulting them
between poems, they look as if they need the
artistry of the insult,
anyhow
you’re going to get your check whether you’re
good or bad
and there’s always the chance you might end up
in bed with a coed…

flying out of town, back to L.A., your woman
meeting you at the airport, driving you in—
you’re a traveling salesman: you sell
poems.
back at the place you try to sober up
get in an argument with your woman
about whether you got laid or not (you
never ask her)
she claims you got laid. she’s sometimes
wrong.
you will be glad to be at the racetrack
the next day
just being a horseplayer, standing with the
other horseplayers watching them run: that’s
the good part: not being a poet, not having to
get under the sheets with a coed and doing it
like you’re immortal,
meanwhile
your woman screaming, “the next reading
I’m going with you! look at you! they’ve sucked
you dry”
“gimme another beer, baby…”
she just doesn’t understand: it’s the only job you
have
it’s the only thing you can do.

******

playing it out

there are only two men I can really
relate to in this world and
one is on his deathbed
and the other, well, his wife
just ran away from him.
and I sit here typing
these things
drunk
as everybody else in the
neighborhood is
asleep except for
two dogs
barking
at the sound of these
keys.
it’s strange, I think,
that the best I know are
in trouble
while the worst are
healthy, calm and
prosperous;
they are also exception-
ally dull
and consider themselves
my friends.
I keep typing these
drunk poems
sitting in this chair
smoking too many
cigarettes
and not understanding
anything
and finally
not wanting to.
just drinking and
cracking these keys to
make the dogs
bark
night into morning.

******

a sad poem

I live in a middle class neighborhood of an unfashionable
city
but even here there have been murders a half a block
away
and I would like to write five novels before I leave.
my security system man is a weightlifter and he
walked about the house
checking it out and he noticed the bookcase:
“geez, ya got a lot of books!”
“I write.”
“you’re a writer?”
“yeah…”
“can I have one of your books?”
I pulled one down and autographed it for him.
he finished the housecheck and recommended various
measures.
I agreed, wrote him a check for the total amount.
the next day he phoned: “listen, I was up all night
reading that book. you’ve been there: all those
women, the booze…you remind me of myself…”
“thanks.”
“what I like about your writing, it’s easy to
understand. I’m going to show your book to all
the boys down at the office.”
“o.k.”
“listen, I saw those weights in your bedroom. do
you lift those weights?”
“no, they’re mostly a decoration.”
“you ought to work out…”
“I know…”
after he hung up I went in and took a pull at the
weights (only 65 pounds), did ten overhead, ten gut
pulls, ten arm lifts.
that was two months ago, I haven’t lifted them
since but
we haven’t been robbed either.
just more books stolen from the bookcase (many
originals I’ll never be able to replace) by
friends who come by to drink my wine and talk and
laugh with me.
no security system will detect that type
except my own
which has always known and which keeps failing
for their sake
which is no way to conduct any type of business,
even this one.

******

60 yard pass

most people don’t do very well and I get discouraged with
their existence, it’s such a waste: all those
bodies, all those lives
malfunctioning: lousy quarterbacks, bad waitresses, in-
competent carwash boys and presidents, cowardly
goal-keepers
inept
garage mechanics
bumbling tax accountants and
so forth.
yet
now and then
I see a single performer doing something with a
natural excellence
it
can be
a waitress in some cheap cafe or a 3rd string
quarterback
coming off the bench with 24 seconds on the clock
and completing that winning
60 yard pass.
which lets me believe that
the possibility of the miracle is here with us
almost every day
and I’m glad that now and then
some 3rd string quarterback
shows me the truth of that belief
whether it be in science, art, philosophy,
medicine, politics and/or etc.
else I’d shoot all the lights out of
this fucking city
right now.

******

she said:

what are you doing with all those paper
napkins in your car?
we don’t have napkins like
that
how come your car radio is
always tuned to some
rock and roll
station?
do you drive around with
some
young thing?
you’re
dripping tangerine
juice
on the floor.
whenever you go into
the kitchen
this towel gets
wet and dirty.
why is
that?
when you let my
bathwater run
you never
clean the
tub first.
why don’t you
put your toothbrush
back
in the rack?
you should always
dry your
razor.
sometimes I think
you hate
my cat.
Martha says
you were
downstairs
sitting with her
and you
had your
pants off.
you shouldn’t wear
those
$100 shoes in
the garden
and you don’t keep
track
of what you
plant out there
that’s
dumb
you must always
set the cat’s bowl back
in
the same place.
don’t
bake fish
in a frying
pan…
I never saw
anybody
harder on the
brakes of their
car
than you.
let’s go
to a
movie.
listen what’s
wrong with you?
you act
depressed.

******

Ginsberg?

I am sitting in the clubhouse
grandstand
$311 ahead going into the
7th
when this very young man
walks up
stands there
as I am going over the
Form.
“pardon me,” he says.
“yes?”
“listen,” he says, “I think
I know you…”
“no,” I say, “you don’t.”
“don’t you know Allen
Ginsberg?”
“I don’t know any
Ginsberg…”
“didn’t you give a
reading at a
nightclub called the
Sweetwater?”
“I don’t know what a
reading is…”
“listen,” he says, “I
know you!”
I stand up and face
him.
“listen, buddy, I’m a
gardener for some
rich people.
that’s how I
make it.”
I turn and walk off
down through the rows
of seats
feeling good
just like a gardener
should
out on a gambling night
after a row with
his woman.

******

writing is a state of trance

she walks in while
I’m typing.
“listen,” she says, “I…”
as I scream and leap out of
my chair.
“sorry,” she says, “I wanted to
ask you about something…”
“yes, what is it?”
she leaves and I rip the paper
from the typer and throw it
into the trash.
there’s no way of
getting it back.
then I forget about her
start again
am three or four pages
into it when she
walks in,
“listen, I…”
“HOLY SHIT” I leap out of
my chair.
I answer her question and
she leaves.
I sit staring at the page
trying to pick up the flow. it’s
gone.
I rip it from the machine,
trash it.
I sit looking at a
cigar box.
White Owl, it says.
over in a corner
I see a dirty bottle.
HYDROGEN PEROXIDE,
it says.
there’s nothing like
bitching about
bad luck: I do it
very well.

******

the walls

after you’ve hit the bars a while
drinking
going back to your room with a
fat mama
doing it
sleeping
to awaken in the morning
to find your wallet gone
again
no job
no food
no rent
just a hangover and
the dark peeling walls.
after you’ve hit the bars a while
you carry your wallet in a front
pocket
you carry a blade
you carry most of your bills
in your shoe
you go to the crapper to make a
withdrawal.
it gets so ingrained that
even when you go to your room
alone
you automatically hide
your wallet and your money
and upon awakening
you spend hours
searching…
it gets so ingrained
that often when you’re drinking with
a woman you trust
one who is living with you
you often awaken to tell
her: “shit! I can’t find my
wallet!”
“now you know it’s here,” she
says, “you’ve just hidden it
somewhere.”
and after some hours
you find it.
in the old days there were some
strange times:
once going into a library to
return some books
you stopped the librarian just as
she was taking the books away:
“just a moment, please…”
(you saw an edge of green)
and you opened the book and
pulled out 3 twenties and
a ten.
another time
in a Texas roominghouse
after a night of ferocious drinking
the next morning
you found your wallet
but not the money.
the rent was due
and you told the landlady you had
lost your money somewhere…
coming in after a sad walk
in the streets
the landlady met you
she had a handful of green
and said,
“Mr. Chinaski, I was vacuuming
your room and the vacuum kept hitting
a bump in the rug and I pulled
the rug back
and there it was…”
an honest lovely lady.
luckily, after that, I met more
honest, lovely ladies
some who even put money in
my wallet
so I’m not a misogynist
being only two or three hundred
dollars out,
but I have special reservations
about those fat mamas of the streets
because I think the unkindest
crime of all is when
the poor rob the poor
after talking and drinking and
laughing and making love
one leaving the other
broke and hungover
to awaken like that
in some strange city
alone
within dark and
peeling walls.

******

John Dillinger marches on

I sometimes write about the 30’s because
they were a good training ground.
people learned to live with adversity
as a common everyday thing
when trouble came
they adjusted and made the next move,
and if there wasn’t one
they often created
one.
and the people who had jobs
did them with artistry.
a garage mechanic could fix your
car.
doctors made house calls.
cab drivers not only knew every
street in town
but they were also versed in
philosophy.
pharmacists would walk up to you
in drugstores and ask you what you
needed.
the ushers in movie houses were more
handsome than the movie
stars.
people made their own clothes,
repaired their own shoes.
almost everybody did things well.
now people in and out of their
professions are totally
inept,
how they even wipe their own asses
is beyond me.
and when adversity arrives they are
dismayed,
they quit,
spit it out,
lay down.
these, coddled to the extremes
are only used to victory or
the soft way.
it’s not their fault, I suppose,
that they didn’t live
through the 30’s
but I’m still hardly tempted to
adore
them.

******

the sickness

if
one night
I write
what I consider to
be
5 or 6 good poems
then I begin
to worry:
suppose the house
burns down?
I’m not worried
about
the house
I’m worried
about
those 5 or 6
poems
burning
up
or
an x-girlfriend
getting in
here
while I’m away
and stealing or
destroying
the poems.
after writing
5 or 6 poems
I am fairly
drunk
and
I sit
having a few
more
drinks
while deciding
where to hide
the poems.
sometimes I
hide the poems
while
thinking about
hiding
them
and when I
decide to
hide them
I can’t find
them…
then
begins the
search
and the
whole room is
a mass of
papers
anyhow
and
I’m very clever
at
hiding poems
perhaps more
clever than I
am
at
writing
them.
so
then
I find them
have another
drink
hide them
again
forget it
then
go
to sleep…
to awaken in
late morning
to remember
the poems
and
begin the
search
again…
usually only a
ten or fifteen
minute
period of
agony
to find
them
and read
them
and then
not like them
very much
but you know
after all
that
work
all that
drinking
hiding
searching
finding
I decide
it’s only
fair
to send
them
out
as a
record of
my travail
which
if accepted
will appear in
a little
magazine
circulation
between
100 and
750
a year-and
one-half
later
maybe.
it’s
worth
it.

******

our curious position

Saroyan on his deathbed said,
“I thought I would never die…”
I know what he meant:
I think of myself forever
rolling a cart through a
supermarket
looking for onions, potatoes
and bread
while watching the misshapen
and droll ladies push
by.
I think of myself forever
driving the freeway
looking through a dirty
windshield with the radio tuned to
something I don’t want
to hear.
I think of myself forever
tilted back in a
dentist’s chair
mouth
crocodiled open
musing that
I’m in
Who’s Who in America
I think of myself forever
in a room with a depressed
and unhappy woman.
I think of myself forever
in the bathtub
farting underwater
watching the bubbles
and feeling proud.
but dead, no…
blood pin-pointed out of
the nostrils,
my head cracking across
the desk
my fingers grabbing at
dark space…
impossible…
I think of myself forever
sitting upon the edge
of the bed
in my shorts with
toenail clippers
cracking off
huge ugly chunks
of nail
as I smile
while my white cat
sits in the window
looking out over the
town
as the telephone
rings…
in between the
punctuating
agonies
life is such a
gentle habit:
I understand what
Saroyan
meant:
I think of myself forever
walking down the
stairs
opening the door
walking to the
mailbox
and finding all that
advertising
which
I don’t believe
either.

******

the history of a tough motherfucker

he came to the door one night wet thin beaten and
terrorized
a white cross-eyed tailless cat
I took him in and fed him and he stayed
grew to trust me until a friend drove up the driveway
and ran him over
I took what was left to a vet who said, “not much
chance…give him these pills…his backbone
is crushed, but it was crushed before and somehow
mended, if he lives he’ll never walk, look at
these x-rays, he’s been shot, look here, the pellets
are still there…also, he once had a tail, somebody
cut it off…”
I took the cat back, it was a hot summer, one of the
hottest in decades, I put him on the bathroom
floor, gave him water and pills, he wouldn’t eat, he
wouldn’t touch the water, I dipped my finger into it
and wet his mouth and I talked to him, I didn’t go any-
where, I put in a lot of bathroom time and talked to
him and gently touched him and he looked back at
me with those pale blue crossed eyes and as the days went
by he made his first move
dragging himself forward by his front legs
(the rear ones wouldn’t work)
he made it to the litter box
crawled over and in,
it was like the trumpet of possible victory
blowing in that bathroom and into the city, I
related to that cat—I’d had it bad, not that
bad but bad enough…
one morning he got up, stood up, fell back down and
just looked at me.
“you can make it,” I said to him.
he kept trying, getting up and falling down, finally
he walked a few steps, he was like a drunk, the
rear legs just didn’t want to do it and he fell again, rested,
then got up.
you know the rest: now he’s better than ever, cross-eyed,
almost toothless, but the grace is back, and that look in
his eyes never left…
and now sometimes I’m interviewed, they want to hear about
life and literature and I get drunk and hold up my cross-eyed,
shot, runover de-tailed cat and I say, “look, look
at this”
but they don’t understand, they say something like, “you
say you’ve been influenced by Celine?”
“no,” I hold the cat up, “by what happens, by
things like this, by this, by this”
I shake the cat, hold him up in
the smoky and drunken light, he’s relaxed he knows…
it’s then that the interviews end
although I am proud sometimes when I see the pictures
later and there I am and there is the cat and we are photo-
graphed together.
he too knows it’s bullshit but that somehow it all helps.

******

space creatures

they are at the track every
Saturday afternoon: two
immensely fat men
a fat woman
and the fat woman’s son
(who is also getting obese
and is the son of one of
the men).
they sit together
eat hotdogs
drink beer
and scream together
during the race
and after the
race.
no matter
who wins
they scream.
between races they
argue while consuming
hotdogs and beer.
I sit and watch them
from a distance.
they are far more
interesting than
the horses or
the war in
Nicaragua.
as I watch
the fattest man
lifts his beercup
(large size)
and gulps down a
mass of suds.
his mouth is
strangely small and
he bites at
the cup and
much of the beer
spills out
runs down
each side
of his chin and
onto
his shirt.
he pulls the cup
out of his mouth
and screams:
“SHIT”
“YOU ASSHOLE”
the fat woman
screams at
him.
“SHUT UP”
he screams
back at her.
then they both
sit there
not angry
at all
as if nothing
had occurred.
then
the other
fat man
says:
“I’M GONNA BET
THE 6, THE 3 AND
THE 9!”
even though
he’s only speaking
it’s as if
the average person were
shouting.
the son
is dressed in
red pants
white t-shirt
white tennis
shoes.
the two men
are dressed
in black pants
white t-shirts
and very shiny
black shoes.
they look like
brothers.
the woman is
dressed in a
soiled white
dress
wears faded
green
tennis shoes
without socks.
as I watch she
lifts
her beercup
(large size).
she also has
a tiny
mouth
but she has
pinched the edge
of the cup,
made a little
runway.
she drains the
cup
crushes it
flips it off to
one side
belches:
“WHO’S GONNA BUY
THE NEXT FUCKING
ROUND”
nobody sits
near them.
these,
I think, could be
space creatures
from a distant
planet.
I rather
like them.
their attention span
is limited
but they make
few pretenses.
“I’M GOING TO GARDENA
TONIGHT” says the man
who isn’t quite as fat
as the other.
“YOU CAN’T BEAT THOSE
GRAND-
MOTHERS” says the
fattest.
“THEY SIT ON THEIR
HANDS”
“SHUT UP”
says
the woman.
the son
in the red pants
never says
anything.
he just sits
around and
stands around
gradually getting
bigger.
then the horses
appear on the track
for the
post parade.
“SHOEMAKER THE
FAKER” the fattest
man screams at
the world’s
winningest
jock.
Shoemaker blinks but
carries on.
having made a
few million
he understands the
rancor of
losers.
then the woman
leaps up.
well, she doesn’t
leap…she
rises, a
mountain of
womanhood and
says: “HEY, DIDJA
SEE THAT THE 5
HORSE JUST SHIT
HE’S GONNA BE
LIGHTER THAT GIVES
HIM THE ADVANTAGE
25 TO ONE I GOT
MY GOD DAMNED
BET”
“SIT DOWN” says the
fattest one. “YOU’RE
BLOCKING OUT THE
SUN”
I leave then.
go to the betting
window.
I bet Shoemaker the
faker.
when I come back
they’re gone.
I don’t understand
it.
the race goes
off.
Shoemaker comes
in at
5 to one.
I’ve got him
20 win.
they don’t
return
after that
race or the
next.
and I realize
that
they are
gone
I am beset with
an inescapable
sadness
they have gone
somewhere
they are somewhere
else
they are drinking
beer and eating
getting bigger
and louder
these
terrible
obnoxious
undefeated
beings.
I miss them.

******

the lady poet

it was 7 or 8 years ago
we lived together
with our 2 typewriters
working away
and her 2 children
manipulating the room.
she was difficult with
her brats:
“get away can’t you see
that Mama is
typing”
so they would come to me
and I would
answer their questions between
my beers and
my lines.
I really wasn’t too fond
of them
but I wanted the lady to
do well:
poetry was important to
her,
she became very excited
and hammered the keys
as if great verse
was being drilled
into the page.
when she finished a poem
she’d bring it to me
and I’d read it,
“yes, it’s good…but
don’t you think it’d
read better if you
began at line
4, dropped line
7…and then, of
course, you are going
to need an ending
line, I don’t like the
ending…”
“what do you think
the ending should
be?”
“how about…” and
I would suggest a
line.
“why, yes, of course!”
she’d say, then run over
and reshape the
poem.

the lady’s poems began to
appear in some of the
little magazines
and soon
she was invited to give
readings at the
local poetry holes
and I went with her
and
listened
she had long hair and
wild, wild eyes, and
she danced and pranced up
there with her poems,
overdramatizing,
but she had a great
body
and she
twisted
it
and read and waved her
poems
and the men loved her,
such men as there are in
such places
with their little rhymers
tucked into their
knapsacks
and their neutered faces
glistening—
the applause made the lady
think
that things were really
occurring
and it kept her
twisting
prancing, dancing
and
typing…
the lady
one night
after lovemaking
told me,
“some day I will be
greater than
you!”
“at many things,”
I replied, “you
already are.”
we typed together
and apart
for some years
and as such things finally go
it went.
she dissolved to some
desert town
and I repaired to
East Hollywood
where I lived with some
ladies
who didn’t give a fuck
about typing at
all, who really didn’t
give a fuck about
anything.
I lived through that time,
got away,
moved to a small town
near the harbor
where I began to hear from
the lady poet
again
via phone and letter.
mainly, I was evasive, having
learned some time ago that
going back
doesn’t mesh with going
forward.
“you were my muse,”
she said, again and
again, “I can’t write
anymore…”
so, you see, I served a
purpose:
and that’s
a rather nice thing, don’t you
think?
much better, I think, than
being known for being kindly
under stress
or having a big throbbing
dick
waving
forevermore ready
to enter those hungry
thighs
where no man, beast or
god
can stay forever
or even
wants to?

******

good time girl

you had your crowd
out back…your people just
sitting there and drinking and
listening to you…
you were competing with
me!
but we danced!
we had a good time!
and god, we laughed too!
you missed Culpepper!
god, Culpepper was funny!
we danced and laughed, that’s what
a party’s for!
you don’t know it, but I went back
there
and I saw you with 3 or 4
people,
god, how somber you all were!
it was like a meeting of the
dead!
well, you tried to compete with me
and you failed!
I’m from the country and we know
how to party!
you think I dance too sexy!
sure I shake my ass!
it feels good!
WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO, COVER
ALL THIS WITH A GRANNY DRESS
I dance close and I follow the man’s
lead, I was always taught to follow
the man’s lead since I was a
little girl!
in the country, that’s natural,
there’s nothing dirty about it!
you’re the one with the dirty
mind!
you’re jealous because you can’t
dance.
and you don’t like people because
you’re afraid of them!
I like people and I like parties
and I like to dance!
and so do all my sisters, they’d
drive 2,000 miles to go to a
party!
well, why don’t you say something?
you just sit there drinking and
looking at me!
hey, where the hell are you
going
you’re always running out the
door and jumping into your car
and driving off!
well, if you don’t want my
pussy
somebody else
will!
you don’t know nothin’ about
parties, you son of a
bitch!

******

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