there’s the
liquor
store
a bit to drink
and a
lottery
ticket.
for the
others:
nothing.
beggars of the
grandstand.
the State is going
to
make it.
the track is going
to
make
it
thanks to the
Days of the Living
Dead.
well,
the horses are
beautiful
anyhow.
the old horseplayer
he wears the same pants
the same coat
the same shoes
day after day.
his shirttail hangs out.
his shoes are unlaced.
his hair is white and
uncombed.
he is balding.
he walks slowly to make his
bets, then
walks slowly back to his
seat.
he watches each race
without emotion.
he is hooked on nothing but
an impossibility.
he is so tired.
the old horseplayer.
the skies, the mountains,
music, nothing matters to
him.
he’s hooked on an
impossibility.
post time
some of the old rich still make it to
Santa Anita Turf Club parking.
and the old rich still buy Cadillacs—
and he can barely drive the Caddy—
and the valet helps them both
out.
he’s fat and squat, very white, with
merry blue eyes and she’s taller,
dignified but dumb, and her back is
bent.
expensively clothed
they both move toward the Turf Club
entrance
where they are swallowed forever
as the horn sounds to post
and the number one horse steps out
on the track
more beautiful than all the people
more beautiful than all the world
and it
begins.
off and on
at times I still consider coughing it up: gas pipe, 19th floor
window, 3 fifths of whiskey in 4 hours or
slamming at 85 mph into a slab of
concrete.
my first thought of suicide came at age 13 and it has
been with me ever since
through all the botched failures:
sometimes just rather playing at it, little minor
rehearsals;
other times
really trying like hell to
kill myself.
yet, now it’s never totally intense, it’s more like
considering whether to go to a movie or
not or whether to buy a new pair of
shoes.
actually, years go by and the suicidal thoughts
almost completely
abate.
then
suddenly
they return, like:
look here, baby, let’s give it another
shot.
and when it returns it’s fairly
compelling
but not so much in the mind (as in the old
days) but strangely, suicide waits in old little places,
on the back of your neck or
at a spot just under the chin
or along the arms like the sleeves of a
sweater…
it used to hit the gut, now it’s almost like
catching a
rash.
I will be driving along in my car with the radio
on and it will leap at me and I will smile at
it
remembering the old days
when those I knew thought that
my daring crazy acts stemmed from
bravery…
I will drive for several hours
up and down strange streets in
strange neighborhoods
at times
slowing down carefully
where children are playing in the
road.
I will park
go into cafes
drink coffee
read newspapers.
I will hear voices speaking of
ridiculous and dull
things.
I will be back in the car
driving along
and at once
everything will lift:
we all live in the same world:
I will have to pay my gas bill, get a
set of new reading glasses, I will need a
new tire
left rear
and I think I’ve been using my neighbor’s
garbage can.
it is fine to be normal again and
as I pull into the driveway
a large white moon smiles at me
through the windshield of
evening.
I brake, get out, close the car
door, centuries of sadness, gladness and
equilibrium will walk with me up to the door
as I put in the key
unlock it
walk into the place
once again having escaped the
inescapable, I will move toward the
kitchen cabinet for the
bottle
to
celebrate
that
or
whatever there is,
isn’t,
will be,
won’t
be—
like right
now.
balloons
today they shot a guy who was
selling balloons at the
intersection.
they parked their cars at the
curbing
and called him
over.
he came
over.
they argued with him about
the price of a
balloon, they wanted him
to come down in
price.
he said he couldn’t.
one of them started calling
him names.
the other took out a gun
and shot him in the
head.
twice.
he fell
right there
in the street.
they took his balloons,
said, “now we can
party,” and then they
drove off
there are also other guys
at that intersection, they
sell oranges
mostly.
they left then
and they weren’t at the
intersection the next day
or the next or
the next.
nobody was.
recognized
I was at the airport
standing at the arrival section
with my wife
waiting for her sister’s
flight in
when a young man walked up:
“aren’t you Henry Chinaski?”
“well, yes…”
“oh, I thought so!”
there was a pause.
then
he continued: “you don’t
know what this
means to me!
I can’t believe it!
I’ve read all your books!”
“thank you,” I said, “I have to be
thankful for my
readers.”
he gave me his name and we
shook hands.
“this is my wife,” I started…
r />
“Sarah!” he said,
“I know her
from your books!”
another pause.
then:
“I get all your books from Red
down at Baroque…
I still can’t believe it’s
you!”
“it is,” laughed my wife,
“it’s him!”
“well,” he said, “I’ll leave you
alone now!”
“tell Red I said ‘hello.’”
then the young man
moved off.
“he was all right,” I said,
“I usually can’t stand
them.”
“like you say, you have to
be thankful for your
readers.”
“damned right…”
then her sister’s plane tooled
up and we moved with the others
to greet those we knew and those
who knew
us.
them and us
they were all out on the front porch
talking:
Hemingway, Faulkner, T. S. Eliot,
Ezra Pound, Hamsun, Wally Stevens,
e. e. cummings and a few others.
“listen,” said my mother, “can’t you
ask them to stop talking?”
“no,” I said.
“they are talking garbage,” said my
father, “they ought to get
jobs.”
“they have jobs,” I
said.
“like hell,” said my
father.
“exactly,” I
said.
just then Faulkner came
staggering in.
he found the whiskey in the
cupboard and went outside with
it.
“a terrible person,”
said my mother.
then she got up and peeked out
on the porch.
“they’ve got a woman with them,”
she said, “only she looks like a
man.”
“that’s Gertrude,” I
said.
“there’s another guy flexing his
muscles,” she said, “he claims he
can whip any three of
them.”
“that’s Ernie,” I said.
“and he,” my father pointed to me,
“wants to be like them!”
“is that true?” my mother asked.
“not like them,” I said, “but of
them.”
“you get a god-damned job,”
said my father.
“shut up,” I said.
“what?”
“I said, ‘shut up,’ I am listening to
these men.”
my father looked at his wife:
“this is no son of
mine!”
“I hope not,” I said.
Faulkner came staggering into the room
again.
“where’s the telephone?” he
asked.
“what the hell for?” my father
asked.
“Ernie’s just blown his brains
out,” he said.
“you see what happens to men like
that?” screamed my father.
I got up
slowly
and helped Bill find
the
telephone.
luck was not a lady
being half-young I sat about the bars
in it up to the ears
thinking something might happen to
me, I mean, I tried the ladies:
“hey, baby, listen, the golden coast
weeps for your beauty…”
or some such.
their heads never turned, they looked
ahead, straight ahead,
bored.
“hey, baby, listen, I am a
genius, ha ha ha…”
silent before the bar mirror, these
magic creatures, these secret sirens,
big-legged, bursting out of their
dresses, wearing dagger
heels, earrings, strawberry mouths,
just sitting there, sitting there,
sitting there.
one of them told me, “you bore
me.”
“no, baby, you got it
backwards…”
“oh, shut up.”
then in would walk some dandy, some fellow
neat in a suit, pencil mustache, bow tie;
he would be slim, light, delicate
and so knowing
and the ladies would call his
name: “oh, Murray, Murray!”
or some such.
“hi, girls!”
I knew I could deck one of those
fuckers but that hardly mattered in the
scheme of things,
the ladies just gathered around Murray
(or some such) and I just kept ordering
drinks,
sharing the juke music with them
and listening to the laughter from
the outside.
I wondered what wonderful things
I was missing, the secret of the
magic, something that only they knew,
and I felt myself again the idiot in the
schoolyard, sometimes a man never got out
of there—he was marked, it could be told
at a glance
and so
I was shut out,
“I am the lost face of
Janus,” I might say at some
momentary silence.
of course, to be
ignored.
they’d pile out
to cars parked in back
smoking
laughing
finally to drive off
to some consummate
victory
leaving me
to keep on drinking
just me
sitting there
then the face of the
bartender near
mine:
“LAST CALL!”
his meaty indifferent face
cheap in the cheap
light
to have my last drink
go out to my ten year old car
at the curb
get in
to drive ever so carefully
to my rented
room
remembering the schoolyard
again,
recess time,
being chosen next to last
on the baseball team,
the same sun shining on me
as on them,
now it was night,
most people of the world
together.
my cigarette dangling,
I heard the sound of the
engine.
the editor
he sat in the kitchen at the breakfastnook table
reading the manuscripts writing a short rejection
on each replacing the paperclip then
sliding the pages back into the brown
manila envelopes.
he’d been reading for an hour and thirty-five
minutes and hadn’t found a single poem
well he’d have to do the usual thing
for the next issue: write the poems himself and
make up names for the authors.
where was the talent?
for the last 3 decades the poets had
flattened
out it was like reading stuff
from a house of
subnormals.
but
he’d save Rabowski
for last
Rabowski had sent 8 or ten poems in a batch
but always there were one or two
good ones.
he sighed and pulle
d out the Rabowski
poems.
he slowly read them he finished
he got up went to the refrigerator
got out
a can of beer cracked it sat back
down
he read the poems all over again they were
all bad even Rabowski had
crapped out.
the editor got out a printed rejection slip
wrote “you must have had a bad