at the University of Utah!”
“traffic can only move one way,” said the cop,
“turn your car around and go to the stadium.”
“look, I’m reading in 15 minutes. I’m Henry Chinaski!
you’ve heard of me, haven’t you?”
“turn your car around and go to the stadium!” said the cop.
“shit,” said Betsy who was at the wheel,
and she ran the car up over the curb
and we drove across the campus lawn
leaving tire marks an inch deep.
I was a bit tipsy and I don’t know how long we drove
or how we got there
but suddenly we were all standing in a liquor store
and we bought wine, vodka, beer, scotch, got it and left.
we drove back,
got back there, read the ass right off that audience,
picked up our checks and left to applause.
UCLA won the football game
something to something.
a touch of steel
we had the nicest old guy
living in the back—
tall, thin, stately
with an open direct stare
and an easy smile.
his wife was squat
bow-legged,
wore black
looked down at the sidewalk
and mumbled.
she didn’t comb her hair and
was usually drunk.
they’d walk past us as we sat on
the porch.
“he’s a real nice old guy,”
my girlfriend would say.
“sure,” I’d agree.
they had a daughter with aluminum
crutches who wore a white
nightgown and blue bathrobe
when she watered the
small brown patch
of lawn out front.
one day the daughter came out
on her crutches and started
screaming.
someone went inside and the man
had knifed his wife.
the police arrived and handcuffed
him and walked him
out to the street and
then the ambulance came and
they rolled her out
on a stretcher with wheels.
the daughter went back inside
swinging on her crutches
and closed the door.
—which proves what I’ve
always said:
never trust a man with
an open direct stare
and an easy smile
especially
if he smokes a pipe.
(I never saw
the nice old guy in back
smoke a pipe
but the way I see it
he must have.)
brown and solemn
the dog jumps up on the bed
crawls over me.
“are you the Word?” I ask him.
he doesn’t answer.
“are you the Word? I’m looking for the Word.”
he has brown and solemn eyes.
“I’m waiting for the Word,” I tell him,
“I’m walking around like a man
in a large hot
frying pan.”
he wags his tail and tries to
lick my face.
“listen,” she says from the bathroom,
“why don’t you get out of bed
and stop talking to that dog?”
my parents didn’t understand me
either.
time
one collapses and surrenders
not out of choice
or lack of intelligence
or bad teeth
or bad diet
one surrenders
because that’s the BEST MOVIE
around.
once I was so disgusted
with the working of things
that I dialed the time
and listened to the voice
over and over again:
“it’s now 10:18 and 20 seconds
it’s now 10:18 and 30 seconds…”
I didn’t like the voice
and I didn’t care what time it was
yet I listened.
satisfied now
I’m glad somebody stole my last watch
it was so difficult to read
satisfied now
I’ve got a new one
it has a black face and
white hands
and I sit there and watch
the second hand
the minute hand
the hour hand
as outside
caterpillars crawl my walls
and finally fall
like empires
like old dead loves
and new loves
fall.
night’s best
with my black-faced watch
with white hands.
nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen
stupefied after a week’s drinking and
gambling bout
I am in the tub at 10:30 in the morning
shaky
depressed
when the phone rings
and it’s this young girl who sings
folk songs;
she’s quit with her man
thrown his clothes out, she tells
me.
I tell her how those things work—
you’re together then split
together then split
over and over
again.
yeh, she says, wanna hear my new
song? sure, I say, and she sings it to me
over the telephone.
now I am sitting on the edge of the couch
naked, wet,
listening, thinking, damn I’d like to stick it
into you, baby,
and I laugh, the song is funny,
and I say I like it, and she says,
I’m glad.
and I say, look, I’ve got to shape up and
make the track. keep in
touch.
I will, she says.
then I have a couple of Alka Seltzers
and an hour later
I leave, and 6 hours later
I have lost
five hundred dollars.
when I get in
I walk over to the phone
pick it up
then put it back
down.
nobody wants to hear your troubles,
I think, and that young girl doesn’t want
an
old
man.
I turn on the radio
and the music is very gloomy.
I turn it off,
undress, go to the bedroom
pull down the shades and turn out all
the lights
and get into bed
and stare at the blackness,
stone cold crazy
once again.
the way it works
she came out at 9:30 a.m. in the morning
and knocked at the manager’s door:
“my husband is dead!”
they went to the back of the building together
and the process began:
first the fire dept. sent two men
in dark shirts and pants
in vehicle #27
and the manager and the lady and the
two men went inside as she
sobbed.
he had knifed her last April and
had done 6 months for that.
the two men in dark shirts came out
got in their vehicle
and drove away.
then two policemen came.
then a doctor (he probably was there to
sign the death certificate).
I became tired of looking out the
window and began to
>
read the latest issue of
The New Yorker.
when I looked again there was a nice
sensitive-looking gray-haired gentleman
walking slowly up and down the
sidewalk in a dark suit.
then he waved in a black
hearse which
drove right up on the lawn and stopped
next to my porch.
two men got out of the hearse
opened up the back
and pulled out a gurney with 4
wheels. they rolled it to the back of the
building. when they came out again he was in a
black zipper bag and she was in
obvious distress.
they put him in the
hearse and then walked back to
her apartment and went inside
again.
I had to take out my laundry and
run some other errands.
Linda was coming to visit and
I was worried about her seeing that
hearse parked next to my porch.
so I left a note pinned to my door
that said: Linda, don’t worry.
I’m ok. and
then I took my dirty laundry to my car and
drove away.
when I got back the hearse was gone and
Linda hadn’t arrived yet.
I took the note from the door and
went inside.
well, I thought, that old guy in back
he was about my age and
we saw each other every day but
we never spoke to one another.
now we wouldn’t have to.
bright lights and serpents
oftentimes I can’t separate the
people from bright lights
and serpents.
in the supermarket
I see them standing and waiting
or pushing their carts.
I see rumps and ears and eyes
and skin and mouths, and
I feel curiously detached.
I suppose I fear them or
I fear their difference and
I step aside as they
pick up rolls of toilet paper,
apricots, heads of lettuce.
today I saw a man
less than 3 feet tall.
he was shorter than his
shopping basket as he
stood angrily in the aisle
looping steaks into his shopping
cart.
for a moment I felt like
touching him and saying,
“so you’re different too?”
but I moved on as the
lights glared and
serpents abounded.
my total at the register
was $46.42
I paid the cashier whose
teeth kept watching me.
without warning
a bolt of lightning
flashed past my left ear
and flickered out in the fresh
egg section. then
I picked up my bag and
walked out to the parking
lot.
mean and stingy
oh, we don’t give enough parties,
I just love to dance,
we never see anybody,
where have we gone lately?:
to one poetry reading.
you go to the racetrack
and you only make love to me
when you feel like it
when you’re not hung over
when you’re not tired from the
track.
it’s the same thing over and over
again.
I’m afraid to invite people
here because you’ll insult them.
you’re supposed to be the greatest
poet in East Hollywood
but you’re mean and stingy,
you claim we have a great relationship
you claim you like my kids,
but when I lost $75 at the track
you didn’t reimburse me.
you give me very little.
we don’t see anybody
it’s just the same thing over and
over again,
don’t you know that life can be
interesting? I’m so bored, bored,
bored, bored, I’m about to go
crazy!
o.k., I say, and hang up.
now she can get un-bored.
I wonder who will un-bore her
first?
probably a bore. an unemployed actor
with asthma who likes the
3 Stooges.
what she doesn’t realize is
that—usually—only boring people
get bored.
and before you do
I’ll hang up this
poem.
$100
the old woman with the dog
on the rope leash
asked me about the
room
her dress was shapeless,
filthy and ragged at the hem
and her dog was frightened
stunned
shocked
quivering.
I told her the landlord was
not home
and that the room was
in the back on the
2nd floor, and was
$100.
$100? she asked
yes
I
said.
she said
oh…
can I pet your
dog?
I asked.
she said
yes.
the dog would not
trust me
it ducked and pulled away and I stepped
back.
they walked away together down between the
bungalows
down the steps and
off
toward
Western
Avenue.
her dog’s
eyes
were more lovely
than those of any woman I have
ever known.
this particular war
gutted:
sunk like the German navy
the Japanese fleet
gutted:
no air power
no reserves
no recourse
gutted:
as a mouse runs across the floor
gutted:
as I watch a useless blue telephone
cord
25 feet long
gutted:
again
the roads are muddied
banked with dirty snow
as everything continues:
fry-cooks
traffic signals
somebody now pounding a nail
into a wall.
gutted:
the whole thing no more than a decimal point
as she now sings her old song to her
new lover.
German bar
I had lost the last race big
somebody had stolen my coat
I could feel the flu coming on
and my tires were
low. I went in to get a
beer at the German bar
but the waitress was having a fit
her heart strangled by disappointment
grief and loss.
women get troubled all at once,
you know. I left a tip
and got out.
nobody wins.
ask Caesar.
floor job
she has a new apartment
and I stretch out on the couch
smoking
while she scrubs the floor
kneeling in her blue jeans
I see that beautiful big ass
and her long hair falls almost to the floor.
I have been in that body a fe
w times
never enough times, of course,
but I consider my luck sufficient.
I no longer want to make her totally mine,
just my share will do
and it’s a far more comfortable arrangement:
I have no need for exclusive possession.
let her have others
then she’ll know who’s best at heart.
otherwise she’ll likely consider herself
unduly trapped.
but what a show now:
those blue jeans so tight
there’s nothing so magical as a woman’s ass
(unless it be some other part).
I don’t want to die just yet
so now and then I look away
at a curtain or down into the
ashtray or at a dresser.
then I look back
and all the parts
are still there.
I hear soft sounds from the night outside
and I am happy.
the icecream people
the lady has me temporarily off the bottle
and now the pecker stands up
better.
however, things change overnight—
instead of listening to Shostakovitch and
Mozart through a smeared haze of smoke
the nights change, new
complexities:
we drive to Baskin-Robbins,
31 flavors:
Rocky Road, Bubble Gum, Apricot Ice, Strawberry
Cheesecake, Chocolate Mint…
we park outside and look at the icecream
people
a very healthy and satisfied people,
nary a potential suicide in sight
(they probably even vote)
and I tell her
“what if the boys saw me go in there? suppose they
find out I’m going in for a walnut peach sundae?”