“we don’t have to do business at
all.”
“listen, I’ll accept your first offer…”
“very well,” he would say,
“but I will lose on
this…”
then he would write out the
pawn ticket and give me the
money.
“please be sure to read your ticket,
there are
stipulations.”
then he would turn off the light
and pull the black curtain
away…
sometimes I was able to retrieve one
of the items
but eventually they all returned
forever.
also, I found out that the one thing
you could sell in the bars and on the
street were
hock shop tickets.
the hock shops helped me through some terrible
times and I was glad they were
there when nothing else
was, and that booth with the black
curtain: what a marvelous sanctuary,
a place to give up something for
something else that you needed
much more.
how many typewriters, suits, gloves and
watches I left in the hock shops
I have no
idea,
but those places were always
all right
with me.
hell is a closed door
even when starving
the rejection slips hardly ever bothered me:
I only believed that the editors were
truly stupid
and I just went on and wrote more and
more.
I even considered rejects as
action; the worst was the empty
mailbox.
if I had a weakness or a dream
it was
that I only wanted to see one of these
editors
who rejected me,
to see his or her face, the way they
dressed, the way they walked across a
room, the sound of their voice, the look
in their eye…
just one look at one of
them—
you see, when all you look at is
a piece of printed paper
telling you that you
aren’t very good,
then there is a tendency
to think that the editors
are more god-like than
they are.
hell is a closed door
when you’re starving for your goddamned art
but sometimes you feel at least like having a
peek through the
keyhole.
young or old, good or bad,
I don’t think anything dies as slow and
as hard as a
writer.
pulled down shade
what I like about you
she told me
is that you’re crude—
look at you sitting there
a beercan in your hand
and a cigar in your mouth
and look at
your dirty hairy belly
sticking out from
under your shirt.
you’ve got your shoes off
and you’ve got a hole
in your right stocking
with the big toe
sticking out.
you haven’t shaved in
4 or 5 days.
your teeth are yellow
and your eyebrows
hang down
all twisted
and you’ve got enough
scars
to scare the shit
out of anybody.
there’s always
a ring
in your bathtub
your telephone
is covered with
grease
and
half the crap in
your refrigerator is
rotten.
you never
wash your car.
you’ve got newspapers
a week old
on the floor.
you read dirty
magazines
and you don’t have
a tv
but you order
deliveries from the
liquor store
and you tip
good.
and best of all
you don’t push
a woman to
go to bed
with you.
you seem hardly
interested
and when I talk to you
you don’t
say anything
you just
look around
the room or
scratch your
neck
like you don’t
hear me.
you’ve got an old
wet towel in
the sink
and a photo of
Mussolini
on the wall
and you never
complain
about anything
and you never
ask questions
and I’ve
known you for
6 months
but I have
no idea
who you are.
you’re like
some
pulled down shade
but that’s what
I like about
you:
your crudeness:
a woman can
drop
out of your
life and
forget you
real fast.
a woman
can’t go anywhere
but UP
after
leaving you,
honey.
you’ve got to
be
the best thing
that ever
happened
to
a girl
who’s between
one guy
and the next
and has nothing
to do
at the moment.
this fucking
Scotch is
great.
let’s play
Scrabble.
before Aids
I’m glad I got to them
all, I’m glad I got so many of them
in.
I flipped them
poked them
gored them.
so many high-heeled shoes
under my bed
it looked like a January
Clearance Sale.
the cheap hotel rooms,
the drunken fights,
the phones ringing,
the walls banging
I was
wild
red-eyed
big-balled
unshaven
poor
foul-mouthed
I laughed
plenty
and I picked them off
the barstools
like
ripe plums.
dirty sheets
bad whiskey
bad breath
cheap cigars
and to hell with the next
morning.
I always slept with my
wallet under my
pillow
bedded down with the
depressed and the
crazies.
I was barred from half the
hotels in
Los Angeles.
I’m glad I got to them all,
I plugged and banged and
sang and
some of them
sang with me
on those glorious
3 a.m. mornings.
when the cops
/> arrived, that was
grand,
we barricaded the doors
and taunted
them
and they never waited around
until noon
(checking-out time) to
arrest us,
we weren’t that
important
but
I thought we were
walking toward the bar,
and what a place the bar was
around noon, so quiet and
empty,
a place to begin
again,
to buck up with a quiet
beer,
looking out across at the
park
with the ducks over there
and the tall trees
over there.
so,
always broke but always
money from somewhere,
I waited
getting ready to
plug and bang and poke
and sing again
in those good old times
in those very very very
good old times
before Aids.
hunk of rock
Nina was the hardest of them
all,
the worst woman I had known
up to that moment
and I was sitting in front of
my secondhand black and white
tv
watching the news
when I heard a suspicious
sound in the kitchen
and I ran out there
and saw her with
a full bottle of whiskey—
a 5th—
and she had it and
was headed for the back porch
door
but I caught her and
grabbed at the bottle.
“give me that bottle, you
fucking whore!”
and we wrestled for the
bottle
and let me tell you
she gave me a good fight
for it
but
I got it away from her
and I told her to
get her ass out of
there.
she lived in the same place
in the back
upstairs.
I locked the door
took the bottle and a
glass
went out to the couch
sat down and
opened the bottle and
poured myself a good
one.
I shut off the tv and
sat there
thinking about what a
hard number
Nina was.
I came up with
at least
a dozen lousy things
she had done
to me.
what a whore.
what a hunk of rock.
I sat there drinking
the whiskey
and wondering
what I was doing
with Nina.
then there was a
knock on the
door.
it was Nina’s friend,
Helga.
“where’s Nina?”
she asked.
“she tried to steal
my whiskey, I
ran her ass
out of here.”
“she said to meet
her here.”
“what for?”
“she said me and her
were going to do it
in front of you
for $50.”
“$25.”
“she said $50.”
“well, she’s not
here…want a
drink?”
“sure…”
I got Helga a glass
poured her a
whiskey.
she took a
hit.
“maybe,” she said,
“I ought to go get
Nina.”
“I don’t want to see
her.”
“why not?”
“she’s a whore.”
Helga finished her
drink and I poured
her another.
she took a
hit.
“Benny calls me a
whore, I’m no
whore.”
Benny was the guy
she was shacked
with.
“I know you’re no
whore, Helga.”
“thanks. Ain’t ya got no
music?”
“just the radio…”
she saw it
got up
turned it
on.
some music came
blaring out.
Helga began to
dance
holding her whiskey
glass in one
hand.
she wasn’t a good
dancer
she looked
ridiculous.
she stopped
drained her drink
rolled her glass along the
rug
then ran toward
me
dropped to her knees
unzipped me
and then
she was down
there
doing tricks.
I drained my
drink
poured another.
she was
good.
she had a college
degree
some place back
East.
“get it, Helga, get
it!”
there was a loud
knock
on the front
door.
“HANK, IS HELGA
THERE?”
“WHO?”
“HELGA!”
“JUST A MINUTE!”
“THIS IS NINA, I WAS
SUPPOSED TO MEET
HELGA HERE, WE HAVE A
LITTLE SURPRISE FOR
YOU!”
“YOU TRIED TO STEAL
MY WHISKEY, YOU
WHORE!”
“HANK, LET ME
IN!”
“get it, Helga, get
it!”
“HANK!”
“Helga, you fucking whore…
Helga! Helga! Helga!!”
I pulled away and
got up.
“let her in.”
I went to the
bathroom.
when I came out they
were both sitting there
drinking and smoking
laughing about
something.
then they
saw me.
“50 bucks,” said Nina.
“25 bucks,” I said.
“we won’t do it
then.”
“don’t then.”
Nina inhaled
exhaled.
“all right, you
cheap bastard, 25
bucks!”
Nina stood up and
began taking her
clothes off.
she was the hardest
of them
all.
Helga stood up and
began taking her
clothes off.
I poured a
drink.
“sometimes I wonder
what the hell is
going on
around here,” I
said.
“don’t worry about
it, Daddy, just
get with it!”
“just what am I
supposed to
do?”
“just do
whatever the fuck
you feel
like doing,”
said Nina
her big ass
blazing
in t
he
lamplight.
poetry
it
takes
a lot of
desperation
dissatisfaction
and
disillusion
to
write
a
few
good
poems.
it’s not
for
everybody
either to
write
it
or even to
read
it.
dinner, 1933
when my father ate
his lips became
greasy
with food.
and when he ate
he talked about how
good
the food was
and that
most other people