чарльз буковски

******

night on a Visa card

I finished my wine
poured another
took a hit of that
lit a cigarette.
the motel room was
paid for until eleven
a.m.
nice tiny little white
towels
in the bathroom and
the paper-wrapped
soap bars
the celluloid glasses
and the
paper-wrapping over
the toilet seat.
I switched on the
tv
an old black and
white
I left the sound
off and
watched the
faces.
one man and
one woman.
there seemed to
be trouble.
they looked
unhappy although
to most people
their faces would
seem beautiful.
I kept watching
them while I smoked
and drank more
wine.
then I shut the
tv off
got out of my
shorts
walked over to
the bed
pulled the cover
and sheet
back
crawled in.
outside on Sunset Boulevard
I could see all the
neon through the
blinds.
I got up
cut the blinds
got back in.
it was good and
dark.
perfect.
there was a tap
on the door.
I opened it with
the chain
on and
looked out.
she was back.
I let her
in.
“it was awful,”
she said
getting un-
dressed.
“some son of a
bitch tried to
rape me and take
my purse in the
parking lot!
I kicked him in
the balls!
compared to him
you look
good!”
“thank you,
Sherrie, I feel
blessed…”
she climbed into
bed next to
me.
“I just want to
get off the fucking
streets!”
“yeah. I know what
you mean.”
“anything on tv?”
she asked
splashing wine into
her glass.
“just one station,”
I said
getting up and
turning the set on
again
with sound
and returned to the
bed.
the woman on tv
said to the man
on tv, “you’ve got
to choose between your
wife and me! I’m
tired of hiding what
we are doing!
I want our love to be out
front
like a marching band
like a flag of
glory!”
the man bowed his
head and
didn’t answer.
the one
next to me
in bed:
I refilled her
glass.
by eleven a.m. we’d
both be gone
somewhere
else
and the motel maid
would come in and
clean up
after us.
she’d go back to
the streets and I’d
go back to
sometimes
writing about
them.
but meanwhile
we sat up on our
butts
pillows to our
backs
the ashtray
between us on
the bed
we drank our wine
from plastic glasses.
it was a
terrible movie
but it was
nice
sitting there in
the dark
watching it
while
smoking and
drinking
without having
to say
anything.

******

promenade

I am taking a walk about 2:30 p.m.
pass a group of kids standing around
looking at the engine of a car.
the hood is up and one of them appears
to be working on the motor.
I walk by
am thirty or forty feet away from them
when one of the kids yells:
“hey, old man!”
I stop and turn, wait.
they don’t say anything, look down
at the engine.
I wait a moment longer, then turn
and walk along.
I hear one of them laugh, “I don’t think
he liked that!”
I don’t mind at all: at the age of 62
I can still kick their ass
or
drink any of them under the
table.
close to the grave be damned, there’s
not one of them
I’d prefer to be.
it’s a good afternoon.
I hope they fix their
engine.

******

practice

thinking more and more
about death
Christ, it’s getting worse
than the horses
but
something
to muse about.
I remember Henry Miller on
the Tom Snyder Show
and Tom asked Henry (who was
very very old then):
“Mr. Miller, do you ever
think of death?”
and he answered simply, “of course,
I do.”
I remember reading
an excellent poem about death
by D.H. Lawrence:
“build then
the ship of Death
for you must take
the longest
journey
to
oblivion.”
the Christians make a similar
claim.
the other day on the freeway
I was following a car and
the bumper sticker said:
DON’T DIE WITHOUT
JESUS
then you get
macho guys
in factories and
in the bars
who say:
“the only way to die is
while
you’re fucking.”
well, I’ve done that too
any number
of times.

******

the sword

watching a tv show
late at night
there’s this
Chinese
he’s very good
with the sword
he chops off
heads
or
rams it straight
on through or
slices
throats
blood spurts
heads roll like
egg rolls
the movie was
made in
the Orient
therefore
believable
I smoke and
drink
in the dark
thinking
my head is
still
on
as
this man
kills 6 or
7 men in 3
minutes
as I sit
and watch
not even
in sorrow for
the murdered
for
what is
important
is that a man
do his
work
well
of course
what is
not important
is necessary
too
often
they are
the same thing:
the important and
the non-
important
my head is
still
on
I pour a
drink
into
it
and
continue
to watch
the movie:
each man
alone
forever.

******

oh, yes

there are worse things than
being alone
but it often takes decades
to realize this
and most often
when you do
it’s too late
and there’s nothing worse
than
too late.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

an art

all the way from Mexico
straight from the fields
to 14 wins
13 by k.o.
he was ranked #3
and in a tune-up fight
he was k.o’d by an unranked
black fighter who hadn’t fought
in 2 years.
all the way from Mexico
straight from the fields
the drink and the women had gotten
to him.
in the rematch he was k.o’d again
and suspended for 6 months.
all that way
for the bottle and 2 cases of
v.d.
he came back in a year
swearing he was clean, he’d
learned.
and he earned a draw with the
9th ranked in his division.
he came back for the rematch
and the fight was stopped in
the 3rd round because he
couldn’t protect
himself.
and he went all the way back
to Mexico
straight to the fields.
it takes a damned good poet
like me
to handle drink
and women
evade v.d.
write about failures
like him
and hold my ranking in the
top 10:
all the way from Germany
straight from the factories
among beerbottles
and the ringing of the
phone.

******

the good loser

red face
Texas
and age
he’s at an L.A.
racetrack
been talking to
a group of folks.
it’s the 4th race
and he’s ready to
leave:
“well, goodbye,
folks and God bless,
see you around
tomorrow…”
“nice fellow.”
“yeh.”
he’s going to the
parking lot to
get into a 12 year
old car
from there he’ll
drive to a
roominghouse
his room will neither
have a toilet nor a
bath
his room will have
one window with a
torn paper shade
and outside will be
a crumbling cement wall
spray-can graffiti courtesy
of a Chicano youth gang
he’ll take off his
shoes and
get on the bed
it will be dark
but he won’t turn
on the light
he’s got nothing
to do.

******

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