The Last Night of the Earth Poems

  “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