What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

  and I say don’t forget, baby, I’m a shipping clerk. what’ve I got to lose

  but a ball of string?

  the gentlemen in the corner who look like Russians get up, knock

  their plates and cups on the floor and wipe their mouths on the tablecloth.

  some belch (and one farts). they laugh evilly and leave without anyone bothering them. a ribbed and moiled cat comes out of somewhere,

  begins licking the plates on the floor and then jumps up on the

  table and walks around like his feet are wet.

  I try black. the croupier’s eyes dart like beetles. he makes futile

  almost habitual movements to brush them away.

  I switch back to red. I look around for George Raft and spill my drink

  against my chest. Hank, says my whore, let’s get out of here! well, at least,

  I say, I ought to get a blow-job out of this. you needn’t get filthy, the whore

  says. I say, baby, I was born filthy. I try #14.

  DEATH COMES SLOWLY LIKE ANTS TO A FALLEN FIG.

  mirrors enclose us, I say to the croupier, ignoring the scenery of our despair.

  I slap away a filthy thing that runs across my mouth. the cat

  leaps and snatches it up as it spins upon its back kicking its

  thousand legs.

  then George Raft walks in. hello kid, he says, back again? I place

  my last few coins on the chest of a dead elephant.

  the lightning flares, they are stabbing grapefruit in the backroom, some-

  body drops a glove and the place, the whole place, goes up in smoke.

  we walk back to the car and fall asleep.

  no title

  all theories

  like clichés

  shot to hell,

  all these small faces

  looking up

  beautiful and believing;

  I wish to weep

  but sorrow is

  stupid.

  I wish to believe

  but belief is a

  graveyard.

  we have narrowed it down to

  the butcherknife and the

  mockingbird.

  wish us

  luck.

  too many blacks

  my first wife was from Texas and we came back

  to L.A. to live

  she came from oil money and I came from

  someplace else.

  our 2nd day in town

  we drove down Vermont Avenue

  to get her some art supplies

  and as I was tooling my eleven-year-old

  Plymouth south

  a black man rolled past in a nine-year-old

  green Dodge:

  “hey, baby,” he hollered out the window,

  “what’s happening?”

  “nothing much happenin’,” I hollered

  back, “I’m just trying to make

  it!”

  as we stopped for a signal at

  Beverly Blvd.

  a black man on the corner saw me

  he was standing in a broad-brimmed

  Stetson pulled down in front

  and wearing white leather boots

  and lots of gold:

  “Hank, baby, where’d you find the

  blonde gash?”

  “she’s my mark, man,” I replied,

  “you know how it is.”

  I put it into low and pulled

  away.

  “listen,” my first wife said

  nasally,

  “how come you know all these black

  guys?”

  “it’s easy, baby, I’ve worked with them

  on all the gigs. like it’s

  natural.”

  she didn’t answer and when we got

  to the art store

  she was very upset

  about the brushes

  the quality of the paper

  the paints weren’t what she

  wanted

  and the total selection was

  unsatisfactory.

  she was very unhappy

  about everything.

  I stood there and watched her

  beautiful ass and her very long

  blonde hair

  then I walked over to the picture frame

  section

  picked up an 8-and-one-half by

  eleven

  stared through the space of

  it

  and let her

  work it

  out.

  white dog

  I went for a walk on Hollywood Boulevard.

  I looked down and there was a large white dog

  walking beside me.

  his pace was exactly the same as mine.

  we stopped at traffic signals together.

  we crossed the side streets together.

  a woman smiled at us.

  he must have walked 8 blocks with me.

  then I went into a grocery store and

  when I came out he was gone.

  or she was gone.

  the wonderful white dog

  with a trace of yellow in its fur.

  the large blue eyes were gone.

  the grinning mouth was gone.

  the lolling tongue was gone.

  things are so easily lost.

  things just can’t be kept forever.

  I got the blues.

  I got the blues.

  that dog loved and

  trusted me and

  I let it walk away.

  blue beads and bones

  as the orchid dies

  and the grass goes

  insane, let’s have one for the lost:

  I met an old man

  and a tired whore

  in a bar

  at 8:00 in the morning

  across from MacArthur Park—

  we were sitting over our beers

  he and I and the old whore

  who had slept in an unlocked car

  the night before

  and wore a blue necklace.

  the old guy said to me:

  “look at my arms. I’m all bone.

  no meat on me.”

  and he pulled back his sleeves

  and he was right—

  bone with just a layer of skin

  hanging like paper.

  he said, “I don’t eat

  nothin’.”

  I bought him a beer and the

  whore a beer.

  now there, I thought, is a man

  who doesn’t eat

  meat, he doesn’t eat

  vegetables. kind of a saint.

  it was like a church in there

  as only the truly lost

  sit in bars on Tuesday mornings

  at 8:00 a.m.

  then the whore said, “Jesus,

  if I don’t score tonight I’m

  finished. I’m scared, I’m really

  scared. you guys can go to skid row

  when things get bad. but where can a

  woman go?”

  we couldn’t answer her.

  she picked up her beer with one hand

  and played with her blue beads with the

  other.

  I finished my beer, went to the

  corner and got a Racing Form from Teddy the

  newsboy—age 61.

  “you got a hot one today?”

  “no, Teddy, I gotta see the board; money

  makes them run.”

  “I’ll give you 4 bucks. bet one for

  me.”

  I took his 4 bucks. that would buy a sandwich,

  pay parking, plus 2

  coffees. I got into my car, drove

  off. too early for the

  track. blue beads and bones. the

  universe was

  bent. a cop rode his bike right up

  behind me. the day had really

  begun.

  ax and blade

  arriving to applaus
e

  through Spanish doorways

  hardly ever

  works. eating an apple

  sometimes

  works.

  the ax misses by a hair’s breadth

  and breaks the chimney of a

  lady’s house.

  then it swings back,

  cleaves you

  again, there it is,

  yes, there it

  is

  again.

  how to break clear?

  a .44 magnum?

  a can of ale?

  the museum of pain

  doesn’t charge admission,

  it’s free as skunkshit.

  from the brothels of Paris

  to the hardware stores of Pasadena

  from balloons

  to diamond mines,

  from screaming to singing

  from blood to paint

  from paint to miracle

  from miracle to damnation.

  the people walk and talk

  cut to pieces

  pieces of people sliced like

  pie

  knifed and forked and

  gulped

  away.

  I sit in a small room

  listening to classical piano on the radio.

  each note bites,

  nips; you fall into the mirror,

  come through the other

  side

  staring at a lightbulb.

  God sits in Munich

  drinking green beer. we’ve got to find

  Him and ask Him

  why.

  some notes on Bach and Haydn

  it is quite something to turn your radio on

  low

  at 4:30 in the morning

  in an apartment house

  and hear Haydn

  while through the blinds

  you can see only the black night

  as beautiful and quiet

  as a flower.

  and with that

  something to drink,

  of course,

  a cigarette,

  and the heater going,

  and Haydn going.

  maybe just 35 people

  in a city of millions listening

  as you are listening now,

  looking at the walls,

  smoking quietly,

  not hating anything,

  not wanting anything.

  existing like mercury

  you listen to a dead man’s music

  at 4:30 in the morning,

  only he is not really dead

  as the smoke from your cigarette curls up,

  is not really dead,

  and all is magic,

  this good sound

  in Los Angeles.

  but now a siren takes the air,

  some trouble, murder, robbery, death…

  but Haydn goes on

  and you listen,

  one of the finest mornings of your life

  like some of those when you were very young

  with stupid lunch pail

  and sleepy eyes

  riding the early bus to the railroad yards

  to scrub the windows and sides of trains

  with a brush and oakite

  but knowing

  all the while

  you would take the longest gamble,

  and now having taken it,

  still alive,

  poor but strong,

  knowing Haydn at 4:30 a.m.,

  the only way to know him,

  the blinds down

  and the black night

  the cigarette

  and in my hands this pen

  writing in a notebook

  (my typewriter at this hour would

  scream like a raped bear)

  and

  now

  somehow

  knowing the way

  warmly and gently

  finally

  as Haydn ends.

  and then a voice tells me

  where I can get bacon and eggs,

  orange juice, toast, coffee

  this very morning

  for a pleasant price

  and I like this man

  for telling me this

  after Haydn

  and I want to get dressed

  and go out and find the waitress

  and eat bacon and eggs

  and lift the coffee cup to my mouth,

  but I am distracted:

  the voice tells me that Bach

  will be next: “Brandenburg Concerto No. 2

  in F major,”

  so I go into the kitchen for a

  new can of beer.

  may this night never see morning

  as finally one night will not,

  but I do suppose morning will come this day

  asking its hard way—

  the cars jammed on freeways,

  faces as horrible as unflushed excreta,

  trapped lives less than beautiful love,

  and I walk out

  knowing the way

  cold beer can in hand

  as Bach begins

  and

  this good night

  is still everywhere.

  born to lose

  I was sitting in my cell

  and all the guys were tattooed

  BORN TO LOSE

  BORN TO DIE

  all of them were able to roll a cigarette

  with one hand

  if I mentioned Wallace Stevens or

  even Pablo Neruda to them

  they’d think me crazy.

  I named my cellmates in my mind:

  that one was Kafka

  that one was Dostoevsky

  that one was Blake

  that one was Céline

  and that one was

  Mickey Spillane.

  I didn’t like Mickey Spillane.

  sure enough that night at lights out

  Mickey and I had a fight over who got the

  top bunk

  the way it ended neither of us got the top bunk

  we both got the hole.

  after I got out of solitary I made

  an appointment with the warden.

  I told him I was a writer

  a sensitive and gifted soul

  and that I wanted to work in the library.

  he gave me two more days in the hole.

  when I got out I worked in the shoe factory.

  I worked with Van Gogh, Schopenhauer, Dante, Robert Frost

  and Karl Marx.

  they put Spillane in license plates.

  Phillipe’s 1950

  Phillipe’s is an old time

  cafe off Alameda street

  just a little north and east of

  the main post office.

  Phillipe’s opens at 5 a.m.

  and serves a cup of coffee

  with cream and sugar

  for a nickel.

  in the early mornings

  the bums come down off Bunker Hill,

  as they say,

  “with our butts wrapped

  around our ears.”

  Los Angeles nights have a way

  of getting very

  cold.

  “Phillipe’s,” they say,

  “is the only place that doesn’t

  hassle us.”

  the waitresses are old

  and most of the bums are

  too.

  come down there some

  early morning.

  for a nickel

  you can see the most beautiful faces

  in town.

  in the lobby

  I saw him sitting in a lobby chair

  in the Patrick Hotel

  dreaming of flying fish

  and he said “hello friend

  you’re looking good.

  me, I’m not so well,

  they’ve plucked out my hair

  taken my bowels

  and the color in my eyes
>
  has gone back into the sea.”

  I sat down and listened

  to him breathe

  his last.

  a bit later the clerk came over

  with his green eyeshade on

  and then the clerk saw what I knew

  but neither of us knew

  what the old man knew.

  the clerk stood there

  almost surprised,

  taken,

  wondering where the old man had gone.

  he began to shake like an ape

  who’d had a banana taken from his hand.

  and then there was a crowd

  and the crowd looked at the old man

  as if he were a freak

  as if there was something wrong with him.

  I got up and walked out of the lobby

  I went outside on the sidewalk

  and I walked along with the rest of them

  bellies, feet, hair, eyes

  everything moving and going

  getting ready to go back to the beginning

  or light a cigar.

  and then somebody stepped on

  the back of my heel

  and I was angry enough to swear.

  he knows us all

  hell crawls through the window

  without a sound

  enters my room

  takes off his hat

  and sits down on the couch across from me.

  I laugh.

  then my lamp drops off the table,

  I catch it just before it hits the

  floor, and in doing so,

  I spill my

  beer. “oh shit!” I say;

  when I look up again

  the son-of-a-bitch

  is gone—

  off looking for you,

  my friend?

  victory!

  we struck in the middle of a

  simple dawn

  all their ships were in the harbor

  and we torched them and created a giant

  sunrise

  we turned our cannon on the cathedral

  cut the legs off the cavalry

  found the army hung-over in the barracks