чарльз буковски

******

the crunch

too much
too little
too fat
too thin
or nobody.
laughter or
tears
haters
lovers
strangers with faces like
the backs of
thumb tacks
armies running through
streets of blood
waving winebottles
bayoneting and fucking
virgins.
or an old guy in a cheap room
with a photograph of M. Monroe.
there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock.
people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.
people just are not good to each other
one on one.
the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.
we are afraid.
our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners.
it hasn’t told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.
or the terror of
one person
aching in one place
alone
untouched
unspoken to
watering a plant.
people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.
I suppose they never will be.
I don’t ask them to be.
but sometimes I think about
it.
the beads will swing
the clouds will cloud
and the killer will behead the
child
like taking a bite out of an ice cream cone.
too much
too little
too fat
too thin
or nobody
more haters than lovers.
people are not good to each other.
perhaps if they were
our deaths would not be so sad.
meanwhile I look at young girls
stems
flowers of chance.
there must be a way.
surely there must be a way we
have not yet
thought of.
who put this brain inside of me?
it cries
it demands
it says that there is a chance.
it will not say
“no.”

******

my comrades

this one teaches
that one lives with his mother.
and that one is supported by a red-faced alcoholic father
with the brain of a gnat.
this one takes speed and has been supported by
the same woman for 14 years.
that one writes a novel every ten days
but at least pays his own rent.
this one goes from place to place
sleeping on couches, drinking and making his
spiel.
this one prints his own books on a duplicating
machine.
that one lives in an abandoned shower room
in a Hollywood hotel.
this one seems to know how to get grant after grant,
his life is a filling-out of forms.
this one is simply rich and lives in the best
places while knocking on the best doors.
that one had breakfast with William Carlos
Williams.
and this one teaches.
and that one teaches.
and this one puts out textbooks on how to do it
and speaks in a cruel and dominating voice.
they are everywhere.
everybody is a writer.
and almost every writer is a poet.
poets poets poets poets poets poets
poets poets poets poets poets poets
the next time the phone rings
it will be a poet.
the next person at the door
will be a poet.
this one teaches
and that one lives with his mother
and that one is writing the story of
Ezra Pound.
oh, brothers, we are the sickest and the
lowest of the breed.

******

soul

oh, how worried they are about my
soul!
I get letters
the phone rings…
“are you going to be all right?”
they ask.
“I’ll be all right,” I tell them.
“I’ve seen so many go down the drain,”
they tell me.
“don’t worry about me,” I say.
yet, they make me nervous.
I go in and take a shower
come out and squeeze a pimple on my
nose.
then I go into the kitchen and make
a salami and ham sandwich.
I used to live on candy bars.
now I have imported German mustard
for my sandwich. I might be in danger
at that.
the phone keeps ringing and the letters keep
arriving.
if you live in a closet with rats and
eat dry bread
they like you.
you’re a genius
then.
or if you’re in the madhouse or
the drunktank
they call you a genius.
or if you’re drunk and shouting
obscenities and
vomiting your life-guts on
the floor
you’re a genius.
but get the rent paid up a month in
advance
put on a new pair of stockings
go to the dentist
make love to a healthy clean girl
instead of a whore
and you’ve lost your
soul.
I’m not interested enough
to ask about
their souls.
I suppose I
should.

******

dead now

I always wanted to ball
Henry Miller, she said,
but by the time I got there
it was too late.
damn it, I said, you girls
always arrive too late.
I’ve already masturbated
twice today.
that wasn’t his problem,
she said. by the way,
how come you flog-off
so much?
it’s the space, I said,
all that space between
poems and stories, it’s
intolerable.
you should wait, she said,
you’re impatient.
what do you think of Celine?
I asked.
I wanted to ball him too.
dead now, I said.
dead now, she said.
care to hear a little
music? I asked.
might as well, she said.
I gave her Ives.
that’s all I had left
that night.

******

rain or shine

the vultures at the zoo
(all 3 of them)
sit very quietly in their
caged tree
and below
on the ground
are chunks of rotting meat.
the vultures are over-full.
our taxes have fed them
well.
we move on to the next
cage.
a man is in there
sitting on the ground
eating
his own shit.
I recognize him as
our former mailman.
his favorite expression
had been:
“have a beautiful day.”
that day, I did.

******

bedpans

in the hospitals I’ve been in
you see the crosses on the walls
with the thin palm leaves behind them
yellowed and browned
it is the signal to accept the inevitable
but what really hurts
are the bedpans
hard under your
ass
you’re dying
and you’re supposed to sit up on this
impossible thing
and urinate and
defecate
while in the bed
next to yours
a family of 5 brings good cheer
to an incurable
heart-case
cancer-case
or a case of general rot.
the bedpan is a merciless rock
a horrible mockery
because nobody wants to drag your failing body
to the crapper and back.
you’d drag it
but they’ve got the bars up:
you’re in your crib
your tiny death-crib
and when the nurse comes back
an hour and a half later
and there’s nothing in the bedpan
she gives you a most
intemperate look
as if when nearing death
one should be able to do
the common common things
again and again.
but if you think that’s bad
just relax
and let it go
all of it
into the sheets
then you’ll hear it
not only from the nurse
but from
all the other patients…
the hardest part of dying
is that they expect you
to go out
like a rocket shot into the
night sky.
sometimes that can be done
but when you need the bullet and the gun
you’ll look up
and find
that the wires above your head
connected to the button
years ago
have been cut
snipped
eliminated
been
made
useless as
the bedpan

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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 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.

******

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.

******

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