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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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

I fall into it without trying…

she confessed to me
what made her
do it:
“when I first walked
into your place
I looked around
and it was filthy
but you were the first
man I’d ever met
who didn’t have a
tv set,
and it was right
then
that I decided to
fuck you.”
of course, what I
didn’t like about
that was
somebody else
deciding
anything
so I went out
and bought a second
hand
black and white for
$75
but she still climbed
into bed
with me
so I went out
and purchased a large
screen
color tv with
touch control
and she still climbed
into bed
with me
but we played only the
radio
ate sandwiches in the
park
met all her sisters
and waited for it
to end.

******

good time girl

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

******

the lady poet

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

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

******

space creatures

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

******

the history of a tough motherfucker

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

******

our curious position

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

******

the sickness

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

******

John Dillinger marches on

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

******

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.

******

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.

******

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 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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

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.

******

transformation and disfiguration

there were always little tragedies
we heard about them on the job
sitting on those stools
eleven-and-one-half hours a night
every bit of outside news
was greeted by us
much like the inmates of a prison camp
every now and then
a courier would come by and say
“it’s 3 to 2, end of the 3rd…”
he never said 3 to 2 who
because
we were able to decipher all that
one night I heard two fellows
talking:
“Ralph checked out early
when he walked into his house
it was dark
his wife and her lover were in bed
they thought he was a burglar
the lover had a gun
and he shot Ralph…”
“where’s Louie?”
I asked one night
I hadn’t seen Louie
in a couple of weeks
Louie had two jobs
when he slept I didn’t know
“Louie?
Louie fell asleep in bed
smoking a cigarette
the mattress caught fire
he burned to death…”
there were many deaths
among the mail clerks
feeling like an
inmate of a prison
I also felt as if we were
front line troops
under continual bombardment and
attack
when there weren’t deaths
there were breakdowns—
people who after years of
sticking letters
just couldn’t do it anymore
or there were dismissals
for the slightest reason
it was death and transformation
and disfiguration:
people found
they couldn’t walk anymore
or they suddenly
came up with speech defects
or they were shaken by tremors or
their eyes blinked or
they came to work drugged or
drunk or both
it was terror and dismemberment
and the survivors
hunched on their stools wondering
who would be next
the supervisors brutalized us
and the supervisors
were in turn brutalized
by their superiors who
were in turn brutalized
by the Postmaster General
who always demanded
more for less
and the public brutalized
the Postmaster General
and it was finally
the little old lady
pruning her garden roses
who was the first cause
of misery for everybody:
Democracy at work
one night I asked,
“where’s Hodges?”
(I don’t know why but
I was always
the last to know anything
perhaps because I was white
and most of them were black)
there was no reply
about Hodges
who was the meanest soup
and white
to top it all
and I asked again
and somebody said
“he won’t be around
for a while…”
and then
in pieces and bits
it was revealed to me:
Hodges had been knifed
in the parking lot
on the way to his car
and then
it was inferred
that everybody knew
who did it
“would it be anybody
I know?”
I smiled
it got very quiet
Big George put his mail down
stared at me
he stared at me a long time
then he turned
started sticking his letters again
and I said
“I wonder who’s winning
the old ball game?”
“4 to 2,”
somebody said
“end of the 4th…”
Hodges never came back
and soon
I got out of there too.

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