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suggestion for an arrangement

it would be nice to die at the typer instead of with my
ass stuck into some hard bed pan.
I visited a writer friend in the hospital who was dying
inch by inch
in the most terrible way
possible.
yet during each visit
(when conscious) he continued to
talk to me
about his
writing (not as an accomplishment but
as a magic obsession)
and he didn’t mind my
visits because
he knew I understood exactly what he was
saying.
at his funeral
I expected him to rise from his
coffin and say, “Chinaski,
it was a good run, well
worth it.”
he never knew what I looked like
because before I met him
he had become blind
but he knew I
understood
his slow and terrible
death.
I told him one time that
the gods were punishing him because
he wrote so
well.
I hope that I never write that
well, I want to die with my head down on this
machine
3 lines from the bottom of the
page
burnt-out cigarette in my
fingers, radio still
playing
I just want to write
just well enough to
end like
that.

******

result

the room was small but neat and when I visited him
he was on that bed like a grounded seal
and it was embarrassing, I mean,
coming across with the conversation;
I really didn’t know him that well
except through his writing,
and they kept him drugged—
they kept operating, chopping parts of him
away
but being a true writer
Fante talked about his next novel.
blind, and cut away, again and again,
he had already dictated one novel
from that bed
a good work, it had been published
and now he talked to me about another
but I knew he wouldn’t make it
and the nurses knew
everybody knew
but he just went on talking to me
about his next novel.
he had an unusual plot idea
and I told him it sounded
great,
and after another visit or two
his wife phoned me one afternoon
and told me that
it was over…
it’s all right, John, nobody has ever
written that last one.
you were really tough on those nurses, though,
and that pleased me, the way you brought them
running in there in their crinkled whites,
you proved me more than right:
my assertion
that your power of command
with simple language was
one of the magnificent things of
our century.

******

sardines in striped dresses

all right, they’re playing Beethoven again; when I was
sleeping on that park bench in Texas they were playing
Beethoven, when it rained last Sunday and the pier fell
into the water they were playing Beethoven; I walked on
that pier 55 years ago and now it’s down in the ocean,
like Atlantis
but things break and vanish, that’s not news, got a
letter today from Louise, she says she’s leaving the
French Quarter and moving in with her sister in a small
town 45 minutes out of New Orleans.
people are getting tired, people are falling down and getting
back up, and they are playing Beethoven as the bums stop
me outside the post office: “Good morning, sir, have you
got a dollar?”
the old aerial circus is falling from the sky, dogs and
cats look at me oddly, the Klan appears, vanishes, Hitler
sniffles underground between palm tree roots, this cheap
cigar I’m smoking, it says Cuba, it says Havana, smuggled
all this way to gag me as
they are playing Beethoven, as Beethoven plays
William Saroyan is dead Celine is dead but Fante won’t
die
legs chopped off, and blind in his narrow grave he won’t
die:
3 years laying flat like that in that hospital, what is
he thinking?
I want to go quick like a seedless olive into the mouth
of a fool, as young girls keep arriving from Des
Moines wiggling like sardines in striped dresses, what
does it mean, listening to Beethoven now?
and now it’s over…“Head for some Palm Springs sun,”
the announcer begins as I tune him out and grimace at
this cigar, turn the radio back up: it’s
Mahler, the 10th, right after the Bee’s 5th, some hell
of a heavy night as pretty much alone here
I think of how much I like Somerset Maugham’s title The Razor’s Edge,
then I put out the fucking cigar, drain some wine,
get up, thinking, it’s the
same for everybody, more or less, some more, some
less, Celine’s dead, Beethoven’s quiet a moment:
it’s been a world full of the brave
and I love them all
as outside the
Vincent Thomas Bridge arcs in the dark
holding, just now, the luck of us all.

******

a note to the boys in the back room:

I get more and more mimeo chapbooks in the mail
written by fellows who used to know me
in the good old days.
these fellows are all writers
and they write about me
and they seem to remember
what I said
what I did.
some of it is exaggerated
some of it is humorous
and a majority of it is
self-serving—
where I tend to look bad or
ridiculous
or even insane
they always describe themselves
as calm and dependable observers
instead of
(in many cases)
as the non-talented
boring
ass-sucking
pretentious and
time-consuming
little farts
that they were.
I feel no rancor at what they
write.
it’s only that I’ve already done a
better job
with that particular subject
matter
and I would suggest that they
move on to the next man
just as my women have
done.

******

the condition

all up and down the avenues
the people are in pain;
they sleep in pain, they awaken
in pain;
even the buildings are in pain,
the bridges
the flowers are in pain
and there is no release—
pain sits
pain floats
pain waits
pain is.
don’t ask why there are
drunks
drug addicts
suicides
the music is bad
and the love
and the script:
this place now
as I type this
or as you read this:
your place now.

******

the day the epileptic spoke

the other day
I’m out at the track
betting Early Bird
(that’s when you bet at the
track before it opens)
I am sitting there having
a coffee and going over
the Form
and this guy slides toward
me—
his body is twisted
his head shakes
his eyes are out of
focus
there is spittle upon his
lips
he manages to get close to
me and asks,
“pardon me, sir, but could you
tell me the number of
Lady of Dawn in the
first race?”
“it’s the 7 horse,”
I tell him.
“thank you, sir,”
he says.
that night
or the next morning
really:
12:04 a.m.
Los Alamitos Quarter Horse
Results on radio
KLAC
the man told me
Lady of Dawn
won the first at
$79.80
that was two weeks
ago
and I’ve been there
every racing day since
and I haven’t seen that
poor epileptic fellow
again.
the gods have ways of
telling you things
when you think you know
a lot
or worse—
when you think
you know
just a
little.

******

the star

I was drunk and they
got me out of my car
put the bracelets on
and made me lay down
on the roadway
in the rain.
they stood in their
yellow raincoats
cops from 3
squadcars.
the water soaked
into my clothing.
I looked up
at the moon through
the raindrops,
thinking,
here I am
62 years old
and being
protected
from myself
again.
earlier that night
I had attended the
opening
of a movie
which portrayed the
life of a drunken
poet:
me.
this then was
my critical review
of their
effort.

******

terminology

my other favorite cat seemed to be dying and
I had him in and out of the vet’s
for x-rays, consultations, injections,
operations
“anything at all,” I told the doc,
“let’s try to keep him going…”
one morning I drove over to pick him
up and the girl at the counter
a vast girl in a wrap-around white
nurse’s outfit
asked me, “do you want your cat put
to sleep?”
“what?” I asked.
she repeated her
statement
“put to sleep?” I asked, “you mean
exterminated”
“well, yes,” she said, smiling with her
tiny eyes, then looking at the card
in her hand she said, “oh, I see it was
Mrs. Evans who wanted it done…”
“really?” I asked.
“sorry,” she said and walked into the other
room with her card and her sorry fat ass and
her sorry walk and her sorry life and
her sorry death and her sorry Mrs. Evans and
both of their sorry fat shits.
I walked over, sat down and opened up a
cat magazine, then closed it, thinking, it’s
just her job, it’s something she does, she doesn’t
kill the cats.
when she came into the office again she no
longer quite disgusted me and I opened the pages
of the cat magazine again and looked at and turned
the pages as if I had forgotten everything, which
I hadn’t
exactly.

******

dogs

someplace in Arizona
at the dog
races.
the dogs were
great
and the boys
led them out
on the track
junior highschool boys
in orange jackets
who should have been home
studying
contemporary history or
biology.
the night was
calm
the track looped in front
of those jagged
mountains
that stood above those
lizard-and-snake-crawled
sands,
the track was my
El Dorado and the crowd was
small
and I came up with
75% winners
none the actual
betting
favorite.
and as she drove me back
she was silent.
she knew I hadn’t been thinking
of her
although I had once loved her
very much, and I felt sad
for her,
she was very straight at the
wheel
her hair falling into her
face,
she said, “now I guess you want
to get drunk?”
“of course,”
I said.
she was always pissed and that
pissed her more and she hit the throttle
and the speedometer on her dash only went to
85
and the needle went past that
and my window was open and the
air rushed in
and the mountains sped by
and cars leaped aside as she
approached
but a jack rabbit didn’t make
it—
one the dogs had failed
to catch—
and the dead carcass was
thrown against the
windshield,
there was a splash of
blood and then the carcass was
gone, and I thought, fuck it, death
I accept
you.
but it didn’t happen, we
skidded to a stop
in front of her court
and we got out
and went inside
where her sister was
waiting,
and we sat there for
several hours
talking
laughing
drinking tea
(for them)
wine for
me
talking and
laughing
as if everything was
all right
instead of mutilated
and murdered
forever.

******

hey, Ezra, listen to this

I think I learned much about writing when
I read those issues of The Kenyon Review
over 40 years ago
the light of the starving library room
falling across my starving hands
holding fat pages full of
deliberate glorious
rancor
those critics
those spoiled fat gnats
bellicose
very fine energy
more fulfilling than my
park bench
I learned that words could
beat the hell out of
anything
they were
better than paint
better than music
better than clay
stone
or their
counterparts
yet
wasn’t it strange
that all I wanted to do then was
lift the skirt of the librarian and
look at her legs and
grab her panties?
I didn’t do it.
literary fame can be the consequence
of knowing
when to go wild
and how.

******

not all that bad

was sitting here, drinking a glass of
wine
the phone rang, I left the drink
to answer in the other
room.
came back in a few minutes
sat down
picked up the glass
felt something moving in my
mouth,
Jesus Christ!
I spit it out into the
ashtray:
a fly
wiggling there…
I picked up the wine glass,
walked into the bathroom
dumped the contents,
then the glass slipped out of
my hand
and rattled in the wash basin.
I rinsed out my mouth, the glass,
then walked back in
poured a new drink.
the fly was still wiggling…
there we were,
a wino fly and a wino man
at 1:30 a.m.
and now there’s another fly
whirling and buzzing
above me
no doubt wanting to join
the party.
well, it could be worse:
I could be drinking with
things that can’t
fly
either with their bodies
or any other
way.
and you can’t
spit them
out.

******

Krutz

I was in Mannheim when my agent phoned me
at the hotel, he said Krutz wanted to have
dinner with the whole gang, and I told
my agent, o.k.
I thought that was very nice of Krutz
because it was a large gang—my agent, my
girlfriend, a French movie producer and his
girlfriend, and also
3 or 4 other people who were hanging on,
maybe more than 3 or 4.
the next evening found us at the most
expensive restaurant in town, at a large
reserved table with a head waiter and 2 or
3 additional waiters.
Krutz had his girlfriend with him and we
had drinks and appetizers, then some-
body remarked how young Krutz was to be
a leading publisher in Germany.
Krutz just smiled around his
cigar.
Krutz published me.
I smiled around my
cigarette.
my agent was there with his wife; I don’t
know how many were at the table, perhaps
12, and I thought what a good guy
Krutz was, not only for publishing me
but also for wining and dining all these
people.
everybody ordered, drank, and waited;
the food was slow to arrive and the
bottles of wine emptied and more arrived via
those gently smiling waiters, and we
all laughed and talked and smoked and
drank,
and then the food arrived—such magic:
frogs legs, crab legs, steaks so tender you
could cut them with your fork; and lobsters,
all manner of strange foodstuffs—onions,
greens, creams and gravies, olives, pickles,
delightful unknown specialties;
and hot bread so soft the butter ran through;
it was royal food, food beyond our ken,
and we ate and drank, and finally finished,
and then we drank some more,
they ran out of our favorite
wine and we ordered a new one, and then
it began to get late, quite late, and the waiters
were slower and slower bringing the bottles and
they were no longer smiling, and soon we stopped
laughing and just talked, and then the
bottles stopped arriving;
the head waiter walked up and placed the
bill in the center of the table on a large silver
platter
and it just sat there
as the waiters stood and waited as
we waited.
the bill was near Krutz and we all watched
Krutz but he didn’t reach
except into his coat where he extracted
a large and expensive cigar…
he took the cigar and leisurely began licking
it, turning and licking it, then
he came with the lighter, stuck the cigar
into his mouth, lit it, inhaled contentedly,
exhaling a slow and beautiful stream of gentle blue
aromatic smoke…
then he waited.
the message was obvious
to almost everybody.
I looked at my agent, but he was immune to the
tragedy, he was smiling and talking to
somebody.
I didn’t have the money
and I looked around the table:
it was an unbelievable scene as my girlfriend poked
her elbow into my side whispering, “what the hell’s
going on?”
Krutz leaned further back in his chair, sucked,
blew out another langorous stream of blue smoke.
then, suddenly, the waiters came forward, removed
all the plates, all the bottles, and all that was
left were our empty wine glasses and our ashtrays.
we all sat there and the waiters waited and the
head waiter waited and there was no more laughing,
no more talking (well, my agent was still busy
talking and smiling away at somebody).
it was agony, it was dirty dirty agony while
Krutz smoked…
finally, the French director saved us all, he waved
his credit card and the head waiter moved in for the
kill…

we were able to leave then and we met later
outside near the automobiles where Krutz lit a fresh
cigar and his girlfriend gave me a bag of apples
from their garden
which I
thanked them for…

back at the hotel
my girlfriend and I each
ate an apple
and she said,
“these are great apples, these German apples…”
and I said,
“yes, they are.”
and when she went to the bathroom
I took my drink and the bag of apples and
I went out on the balcony…
we were on the top floor
and I hurled the apples
one by one
into the night
into the street
and toward the park
and grabbing the last apple
I really zoomed it
almost going over the side
myself
but, of course, I didn’t
and I turned and walked back
in there
feeling better
but not
much.

******

how I got started

it has taken me decades to realize
why I was usually chosen over the
6 or 7 candidates for those
paltry shipping clerk jobs
in those small business houses
across the nation.
first, I was big—
which meant I could lift heavy
objects.
second, I was ugly—
which meant I was no threat to
the secretaries.
third, I looked dumb—
which meant I was too stupid
to steal.
if I had been running a business
and a guy like me had come to apply
for a job
I would have hired him
right away.
which is rather
the way I ended up anyhow
in another kind of
business.

******

overhead mirrors

I wouldn’t say it was a particularly low time, it was
a time and I tried to adjust spiritually
to most matters.
which meant: not expecting much and not getting much.
but sickness is another matter.
I was living in a cheap court in Hollywood
in between women
and I was buying coke, really
low-grade crap, sniffing that with
beer and scotch.
I got mentally very depressed and physically
sick.
I couldn’t eat.
it got so I just ingested
coke, scotch and beer.
one morning it really got to me, I was trembling,
having visions…
I couldn’t even drink water…
I was
dying.
the only friends I had were a nudey dancer and
a guy who operated a porno bookstore. they
came by.
“listen, this is it,” I told them, “I’m
dying…”
“we’ll fix you up,” said the porno bookstore
guy (who was also selling me
the watered-down coke).
the nudey dancer shacked with him.
he came back with something pink in a
bottle.
“take this,” he said.
that was about noon.
about 6 p.m. the phone rang.
I picked it up.
“yes?”
it was the porno guy.
“Hank?”
“yes…”
“listen, Babs and I aren’t working tonight,
we’re going to a motel with over-
head mirrors and X-rated tv, we’re going to
relax and fuck.”
“good luck…”
“I know you’re sick, so we’re going to
give you the phone number at the
motel so you can call us in case of
trouble…”
“sure…”
“got a pencil?”
“yeh…”
“it’s…”
he gave me the number.
I didn’t have a pencil, I couldn’t
move.
“thanks,” I said.

it was one of those nights you remember.
(if you don’t fight death it will
just move in.)
at times I
got up
and walked around
turned the radio off and on, flushed the toilet
now and then, ran all the faucets in the place,
then shut them off, turned the lights off and
on, got back on the bed, rested but not too long,
got up, sipped water out of the tap,
sat in a chair and took some coins
out of my pocket and counted them: 25, 26, 27
cents…
I kept turning the water off and on, the lights
off and on, counting the coins and also very
sensibly putting one shoe parallel to the
other shoe and so forth…
as I went about my business I noticed that the
clock hardly moved:
the time always the same: 3:21 a.m.
then all at once, within a
minute
I noticed light coming in under the blinds—
daylight arriving
and when I saw that
I felt a bit better
went to bed
and slept flat on my belly as
usual…
the next night I was sitting on my couch
drinking a beer and eating a fried egg
sandwich between 2 slices of very dry
bread
when
my friends
the nudey dancer and the porno guy
came in.
“how you feeling?” he asked.
“o.k., except it’s my last beer and
I’m broke.”
“shit, man, come on down to our place,
we got plenty of everything…”
they did.
lovely place. I stayed with the beer
except for two vodka sevens and one little
yellow pill
and they had the stereo on
but not too loud
and I stayed
smoked two bombers
drank 18 or 19 beers
thanked them and walked back
home…
the next morning I didn’t puke.
I got up, took a good crap, took a
lukewarm bath, dressed and walked to the
corner of
Hollywood and Western
put a dime in the box
got a Herald-Examiner,
remembering decades back when there
was a newspaper in L.A.
called the Herald-Express and another
called the Examiner
and they merged rather than
kill each other off,
and carrying that paper back
I felt that I had lived a long
time
though not a very wonderful one,
I took the paper back to my place,
sat on the couch
and began to read it
fascinated, finally, with what the
other people
were doing.

******

ass but no class

one time
there was Rene who
had me drive her to a
department store
just before Xmas
and we walked around
as she stocked her
shopping cart with
little goodies, then
she said, “listen, I
can’t pay for these
things, can you buy
them for me?”
“nothin’ doin’,”
I told her.
“listen,” she said,
“you buy this stuff
and I’ll fuck you
like you never been
fucked before.”
so, I paid.
it came to
$145.63
at the counter she
happened to meet
her friends,
Jeff and Clara
and they
talked.
“listen,” she finally
told them, “why don’t
we all go to Hank’s and
have a drink?”
we went.
we sat around with the
drinks.
we drank those and had
some more.
Jeff and Clara
didn’t leave.
I saw Rene lean over
to Clara one time and
whisper something to
her.
I got it.
she was saying, don’t
leave me here alone with
him.
they all sat about
and then Clara and Jeff
said they had to leave
and Rene said she had to
leave too.
I left it
like that.
I let Rene leave.
she took her purchases
with her.
she was a young girl
and I was an old
man.
I watched them
walking away together
up the walk,
Rene with her
victorious
swish.
we’d been to bed
2 or 3
times
she thought, now,
it was enough for me
if she came around
once in a while
wired on speed
while we played
Scrabble all
night.
as they walked away,
I thought,
what an unimaginative
whore,
she has just walked away
from a potential
$200,000.00
I walked into the kitchen
pulled out a beer,
had a hit
and relegated her to a
lifetime of poverty
worse than the one
that I was living
at the
moment.

******

girls

I used to spend 3 days a week
driving one or the other of the
girls to various pharmacies
on Hollywood Boulevard.
how they got their prescriptions
I don’t know
whether they fucked their
doctors or murdered somebody
I don’t know
but they got them.
it was some circus.
one of the girls
phoned me: “Eddie is trying
to get my prescription! tell
Eddie to leave me alone!”
I got Eddie on the phone and
told him that I was going to
kick his ass, that I was on my
way over to do just that.
Eddie was her brother.
he lived there.
when I got there
he was gone.
“he couldn’t find the prescription,”
she told me, “I
had it in my mouth. I almost
swallowed it…”
she showed me the wadded wet piece of
paper, unfolded it and said,
“let’s go…”
I don’t know what it meant to
me.
usually it meant that when we got
back to my place and I took
some pills with the booze
I’d do something stupid
like busting out the
bathroom mirror or
slicing up my coffee table
with my buck knife.
although the girls looked
fairly good
there was not much sex
involved
it meant
letting one or the other of them
out of my car
at the prescription department
of some cheap pharmacy on
Hollywood Boulevard
at 10:35 a.m.
then looking for parking
finding one of them later
wobbling on high heels
looking helpless
but really totally vicious
snarling off any stupid dreamers
in the sidewalk mob
then seeing me,
moving forward
to another day and night
of pills and
alcohol
uppers downers
vodka wine beer brandy
it didn’t matter
until we were petrified
out of existence
until the next
time.

******

my friend

I loved bar room fights.
I fought the biggest meanest men
I could find.
the patrons thought I was
brave.
but it was something else, something
that walked and slept and sat with
me. it ate with me when I ate,
it drank with me when I drank.
I saw it everywhere: in loaves
of bread, on the back of a mouse
running up the wall, I saw it through
torn window shades, I saw it
in the bodies of beautiful women;
I never saw it in the sun but I saw it
in the rain and I noted it in insects;
and I saw it riding in buses
and trolley cars;
I saw it in the dresser drawer when I
pulled it open,
I saw it in the faces of
bosses with their dumb wet lips and
little rivet eyes: blue, brown,
green;
I heard it in the click of timeclocks,
saw it spread like powder across the
faces of my landladies;
I saw it on bar
stairways
leading to the 2nd
floor of some rooming house in
Houston, in New Orleans, in St. Louis,
in L.A., in Frisco;
and I saw it in the doorknobs and I saw
it in the rooms, sitting on the
beds
waiting nicely…
and in some bar
after hours of drinking
somebody says, “hey, Hank, you
ever tried Big Eddie?”
Big Eddie grins, I see it in his
teeth, I finish my beer,
nod at him, get up, walk to
the rear entrance, Big Eddie and
the crowd following, and outside
I see it in the moon and the
bricks
as the patrons lay their bets
I am the underdog, and as Big
Eddie charges I see it in his
feet and on the buttons of
his shirt and I hear a horn
sound somewhere far off, and
it’s as decent a thing as a man
can know.

******

fall out

they are closing the auto plants
out here in California
but a major company is promising
employment to laid-off workers
who will transfer to an Oklahoma
plant
travel expenses
paid.
so now
many of the families are
making the trek
in long caravans of cars
full of children and
possessions
just as in the 30’s
their elders had come here
from Oklahoma
in the same way
now they’re going back
to Oklahoma
with California accents
Grandchildren of the
Dust Bowl
because Japanese cars are
smaller, cheaper,
better
it’s like a little bit of
Hiroshima
in return
or a Japanese horror
movie
with an all-American
cast.

******

bad action

I got a seat down front and started
working on my figures
and a man in a red shirt and red
pants
sat down two seats away
opened a brown paper bag
and began chewing on a sandwich and
potato chips.
I got up, moved several seats
away,
then I heard a man’s voice behind
me:
“let’s see, there are seven of us,
aren’t there?”
and there were: women and men and
children.
I walked downstairs to the crapper,
found a booth, closed the door,
sat down and began working on my
figures again.
there was a rap from the stall to
my left:
“hey buddy…hey, buddy!”
“yeah?” I answered.
“get down on your knees, slip your
cock under the partition and I’ll
give you the best blow job you
ever had!”
I got out of there fast, went back
upstairs, found a seat, sat down
and then I felt something under my
right foot: a dead wren.
another reminder of death.
the public address system
came on:
“Ladies and Gentlemen, the Flag of
the United States of America!”
we all stood up.
the flag went up.
we all sat down.
sometimes being at the racetrack
is worse than being in the
county jail.

******

green

I’ve been drunk in front of cracked bathroom mirrors
in Southern towns of nowhere
holding a paring knife near the jugular vein and
grinning.
that’s when I first learned that stage play is
a great substitute for
reality:
the only separation between doing and
pretending to do
being that infinite hairline of
choice: a
choice between nothing and
nothing.
to awaken in the morning, to
find a place of
employment
where the workers accepted everything
but the dream of
escape.
there were so many places like
that.
there was a job in this town
in Louisiana
which I left each evening
tired and dulled
to that night again
pouring glassfuls and
looking out the
window and
thinking about a girl at
work
in an ill-fitting green dress
who cursed continually about
almost everything.
I only wanted to fuck her
once and
get out of
town.
I only got out of town,
which means I made a choice between
staying nowhere and going
nowhere,
and I imagine if she’s alive she’s
still cursing about
something
but I no longer hold the paring knife
near the jugular vein—
the end is getting
close enough
all by
itself.

******

the skaters

I am sitting at a table in the mall drinking coffee while
Linda shops.
I sit above the ice rink where the children skate
in the afternoon,
mostly young girls dressed in blues, reds, whites, greens,
purples, yellows, orange
they are all very good, swift, they spin and glide,
there are no collisions. even the tiniest child
very good, all—
tiny, larger and largest—
whirl through the open spaces as if they were one.
I like it, very much, but then I think
as they get older they will stop skating, they will
stop singing, painting, dancing,
their interests will shift to
survival,
the grace and the gamble will disappear.
but let’s not feel too bad:
this happens to animals too:
they play so long
then
stop…
then I see Linda, it appears that she has
found something that
pleases her, she rushes toward my table, she
waves,
laughing.
I stand up, wave, smile,
things seem very happy
as down below us they whirl and
glide.
some moments are nice, some are
nicer, some are even worth
writing
about.

******

sweater

I had to drive to Palos Verdes to do some business at the
savings and loan,
there wasn’t much of a line
which was good because there were only two tellers
young ladies
and I got one of them
but she couldn’t seem to work
the computer.
sometimes the computer was down.
I waited and watched her struggle.
8 minutes went by.
my lady came back to the window and told me
that the computer wouldn’t do something for
her.
“I’m new here,” she told
me,
then turning to the other girl
she asked,
“could you help me with this transaction?”
the other girl didn’t answer.
my lady tried again: “Louise, would you
please help me with this
transaction?”
“I’ll be right back,” Louise answered and
closed her window.
she then walked to one of the
tables
where an older woman was talking to a young man
wearing glasses.
Louise stopped about four feet from the
young man
folded her arms and began
listening.
then the young man spoke.
he had on a yellow sweater
only he didn’t have it on,
he had it thrown about his shoulders
and the two empty arms hung down over his
chest.
they continued to converse as I
watched.
the young man did most of the
talking
and as he did so he swayed
back and forth
ever so slightly
and the arms of his sweater swung
back and forth
back and forth
and he continued to talk and
sway
as I watched the empty arms
of his sweater swing
back and forth.
back and forth.
I don’t like people who wear
loose sweaters over their backs
with arms dangling
and these types usually wear
sunglasses pushed back
into their hair
and I could sense
that what he was talking about was
utterly drab
useless
and probably
untrue
and
he had the bland unworried face
of somebody
to whom nothing had happened
yet
and as I watched him sway and
talk
his sweater arms continuing to
swing
Louise stood there
four feet away
arms folded
listening,
and I thought,
this fellow has less
sense
than the common housefly,
and this Louise…
likewise.
she knew I was waiting.
I began walking toward
them,
I had to make the first post
at the racetrack
and these three were
being rude, dumb, as if it was a
natural order of business.
I had no idea what I was going to
say
but it was going to be
good.
they stopped talking as I
approached.
then I heard the voice
behind me:
“Mr. Chinaski!”
I stopped,
turned.
“I got the computer to
function!”
I wasn’t too happy to
hear that.
I went back to the counter
and we completed the
bookwork.
the girl apologized but
I told her it was
all right.
as I walked toward the
door
I needed to pass the
other three.
they were in the
same positions
and the young man was
still talking
but he no longer
swayed
and the arms of his
yellow sweater
no longer
swung
about.
we’d spoiled each others’
fucking
day.

******

out of the blue

she phoned me from a far away
state
“I could never argue with you,”
she told me,
“you’d just run out the door.
my husband’s not like that,
he sticks like glue.
he beats me.”
“I never believed in discussions,”
I said, “there’s nothing to
discuss.”
“you’re wrong,” she said, “you should
try to communicate.”
“‘communicate’ is an overused word like
‘love’,” I told her.
“but don’t you think two people can
‘love’?” she asked.
“not if they try to ‘communicate’,”
I answered.
“you’re talking like an asshole,”
she said.
“we’re having an argument,”
I said.
“no,” she said, “we’re trying to
communicate.”
“I’ve got to leave,” I said and hung
up, then took the phone off the
hook.
I looked at the phone.
what they didn’t understand was that
sometimes there was nothing to
save
except personal vindication of a
personal viewpoint
and that that was what was going to cause
that blinding white flash
one of these days.

******

funny

sometimes you are liked for all the wrong
reasons
or hated for all the wrong reasons
or given credit where there is
none.
I once lived with a woman who
said that I was the funniest man
she had ever met
and she often laughed
when I said something serious.
“oh,” she’d laugh, “you ought to be
in the entertainment
business!”
but when I tried to be funny
she’d say,
“what the hell do you mean by
that? you’re not
funny.”
I finally figured it out:
the truth is the funniest thing
around
because you seldom ever hear
it
and when you do
it astonishes you into
laughter.
and when you try to be funny
you often exaggerate the truth
and that’s not funny
at all…
well, this woman and I
finally separated
and the next one never said whether
I was funny or
not,
she just switched on the
tv
and laughed right along with
the laugh track
while I sat
demeaned and
depressed.

******

the hustle

the readings in those college towns were hell,
of course, but I liked the flying in and out,
drinking on the planes, and I liked the hotels,
the impersonal rooms.
the nights before the readings were best,
stretched out on the bed in a strange town,
the fifth of whiskey on the night stand,
and, you know, those hotels were quiet…
those southern hotels
and especially those midwestern hotels.
it was a stupid hustle but it beat the factories,
I knew that, but it was humorous to me
and ridiculous that
I was accepted as a POET
but after I examined the work of my compatriots
I no longer minded taking the money
and after hearing some of them read
I hardly felt the impostor at all
although I knew I was a bit crazy
especially after drinking
and that
I just might
some night
take out my hose and start pissing from the
podium…
some of the profs must have guessed
for after I accepted an invitation to read
most wrote back to me:
“I hope you won’t cost me my job…”
second best, I remember
the adoring eyes of the coeds
but first of all, like I said, I liked
all those hotel rooms the nights before the
readings
me sitting up in bed, smoking, sucking
on the fifth, sick of looking at the poems,
thinking, if I can fool them it’s all right,
worse have, many more will…
no wonder this world isn’t very
much
then I’d go for a big gulp from the fifth,
say, at 2:30 a.m.—
it was just like being back
home.

******

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