go to hell, and even this
is a better poem than any
of those gravediggers
could write.
artists:
she wrote me for years.
“I’m drinking wine in the kitchen.
it’s raining outside. the children
are in school.”
she was an average citizen
worried about her soul, her typewriter
and her
underground poetry reputation.
she wrote fairly well and with honesty
but only long after others had
broken the road ahead.
she’d phone me drunk at 2 a.m.
at 3 a.m.
while her husband slept.
“it’s good to hear your voice,” she’d
say.
“it’s good to hear your voice too,” I’d
say.
what the hell, you
know.
she finally came down. I think it had
something to do with
The Chapparal Poets Society of California.
they had to elect officers. she phoned me
from their hotel.
“I’m here,” she said, “we’re going to elect
officers.”
“o.k., fine,” I said, “get some good ones.”
I hung up.
the phone rang again.
“hey, don’t you want to see me?”
“sure,” I said, “what’s the address?”
after she said goodbye I jacked-off
changed my stockings
drank a half bottle of wine and
drove on out.
they were all drunk and trying to
fuck each other.
I drove her back to my place.
she had on pink panties with
ribbons.
we drank some beer and
smoked and talked about
Ezra Pound, then we
slept.
it’s no longer clear to
me whether I drove her to
the airport or
not.
she still writes letters
and I answer each one
viciously
hoping to make her
stop.
someday she may luck into
fame like Erica
Jong. (her face is not as good
but her body is better)
and I’ll think,
my God, what have I done?
I blew it.
or rather: I didn’t blow
it.
meanwhile I have her box number
and I’d better inform her
that my second novel will be out
in September.
that ought to keep her nipples hard
while I consider the possibility of
Francine du Plessix Gray.
I have shit stains in my underwear too
I hear them outside:
“does he always type this
late?”
“no, it’s very unusual.”
“he shouldn’t type this
late.”
“he hardly ever does.”
“does he drink?”
“I think he does.”
“he went to the mailbox in
his underwear yesterday.”
“I saw him too.”
“he doesn’t have any friends.”
“he’s old.”
“he shouldn’t type this late.”
they go inside and it begins
to rain as
3 gun shots sound half a block
away and
one of the skyscrapers in
downtown L.A. begins
burning
25 foot flames licking toward
doom.
Hawley’s leaving town
this guy
he’s got a crazy eye
and he’s brown
a dark brown from the sun
the Hollywood and Western sun
the racetrack sun
he sees me and he says,
“hey, Hawley’s leaving town
for a week. he messes up
my handicapping. now
I’ve got a chance.”
he’s grinning, he means it:
with Hawley out of town
he’s going to move toward
that castle in the Hollywood Hills;
dancing girls
six German Shepherds
a drawbridge,
ten year old
wine.
Sam the Whorehouse Man
walks up and I tell Sam that
I am clearing $150 a day
at the track.
“I work right off the
toteboard,” I tell him.
“I need a girl,” he tells me,
“who can belt-buckle a guy
without coming out with all
this Christian moral bullshit
afterwards.”
“Hawley’s leaving town,”
I tell Sam.
“where’s the Shoe?”
he asks.
“back east,” says an old man
who’s standing there.
he has a white plastic shield
over his left eye
with little holes
punched into it.
“that leaves it all to Pinky,”
says dark brown.
we all stand looking at each
other.
then
a silent signal given
we turn away
and start walking,
each
in a different direction:
north south east west.
we know something.
an unkind poem
they go on writing
pumping out poems—
young boys and college professors
wives who drink wine all afternoon
while their husbands work,
they go on writing
the same names in the same magazines
everybody writing a little worse each year,
getting out a poetry collection
and pumping out more poems
it’s like a contest
it is a contest
but the prize is invisible.
they won’t write short stories or articles
or novels
they just go on
pumping out poems
each sounding more and more like the others
and less and less like themselves,
and some of the young boys weary and quit
but the professors never quit
and the wives who drink wine in the afternoons
never ever ever quit
and new young boys arrive with new magazines
and there is some correspondence with lady or men poets
and some fucking
and everything is exaggerated and dull.
when the poems come back
they retype them
and send them off to the next magazine on the list,
and they give readings
all the readings they can
for free most of the time
hoping that somebody will finally know
finally applaud them
finally congratulate and recognize their
talent
they are all so sure of their genius
there is so little self-doubt,
and most of them live in North Beach or New York City,
and their faces are like their poems:
alike,
and they know each other and
gather and hate and admire and choose and discard
and keep pumping out more poems
more poems
more poems
the contest of the dullards:
tap tap tap, tap tap, tap tap tap, tap tap…
the bee
/>
I suppose like any other boy
I had one best friend in the neighborhood.
his name was Eugene and he was bigger
than I was and one year older.
Eugene used to whip me pretty good.
we fought all the time.
I kept trying him but without much
success.
once we leaped off a garage roof together
to prove our guts.
I twisted my ankle and he came up clean
as freshly-wrapped butter.
I guess the only good thing he ever did for me
was when the bee stung me while I was barefoot
and while I sat down and pulled the stinger out
he said,
“I’ll get the son of a bitch!”
and he did
with a tennis racket
plus a rubber hammer.
it was all right
they say they die
anyway.
my foot swelled up double-size
and I stayed in bed
praying for death
and Eugene went on to become an
Admiral or a Commander
or something large in the United States Navy
and he passed through one or two wars
without injury.
I imagine him an old man now
in a rocking chair
with his false teeth
and glass of buttermilk…
while drunk
I fingerfuck this 19 year old groupie
in bed with me.
but the worst part is
(like jumping off the garage roof)
Eugene wins again
because he’s not even thinking
about me.
the most
here comes the fishhead singing
here comes the baked potato in drag
here comes nothing to do all day long
here comes another night of no sleep
here comes the phone ringing the wrong tone
here comes a termite with a banjo
here comes a flagpole with blank eyes
here comes a cat and a dog wearing nylons
here comes a machinegun singing
here comes bacon burning in the pan
here comes a voice saying something dull
here comes a newspaper stuffed with small red birds
with flat brown beaks
here comes a cunt carrying a torch
a grenade
a deathly love
here comes victory carrying
one bucket of blood
and stumbling over the berrybush
and the sheets hang out the windows
and the bombers head east west north south
get lost
get tossed like salad
as all the fish in the sea line up and form
one line
one long line
one very long thin line
the longest line you could ever imagine
and we get lost
walking past purple mountains
we walk lost
bare at last like the knife
having given
having spit it out like an unexpected olive seed
as the girl at the call service
screams over the phone:
“don’t call back! you sound like a jerk!”
ah…
drinking German beer
and trying to come up with
the immortal poem at
5 p.m. in the afternoon.
but, ah, I’ve told the
students that the thing
to do is not to try.
but when the women aren’t
around and the horses aren’t
running
what else is there to do?
I’ve had a couple of
sexual fantasies
had lunch out
mailed three letters
been to the grocery store.
nothing on tv.
the telephone is quiet.
I’ve run dental floss
between my teeth.
it won’t rain and I listen
to the early arrivals from the
8 hour day as they
drive in and park their cars
behind the apartment
next door.
I sit drinking German beer
and trying to come up with the
big one
and I’m not going to make it.
I’m just going to keep drinking
more and more German beer
and rolling smokes
and by 11 p.m.
I’ll be spread out
on the unmade bed
face up
asleep under the electric
light
still waiting on the immortal
poem.
the girl on the bus stop bench
I saw her when I was in the left lane
going east on Sunset.
she was sitting
with her legs crossed
reading a paperback.
she was Italian or Indian or
Greek
and I was stopped at a red signal
as now and then a wind
would lift her skirt,
I was directly across from her
looking in,
and such perfect immaculate legs
I had never seen.
I am essentially bashful
but I stared and kept staring
until the person in the car behind
me honked.
it had never happened quite like that
before.
I drove around the block
and parked in the supermarket
lot
directly across from her
in my dark shades
I kept staring
like a schoolboy in his first
excitement.
I memorized her shoes
her dress
her stockings
her face.
cars came by and blocked my
view.
then I saw her again.
the wind flipped her skirt
high along her thighs
and I began rubbing myself.
just before her bus came
I climaxed.
I smelled my sperm
felt it wet against my shorts
and pants.
it was an ugly white bus
and it took her away.
I backed out of the parking lot
thinking, I’m a peep-freak
but at least I didn’t expose
myself.
I’m a peep-freak
but why do they do that?
why do they look like that?
why do they let the wind do
that?
when I got home
I undressed and bathed
got out
toweled
turned on
the news
turned off the news
and
wrote this poem.
I’m getting back to where I was
I used to take the back off
the telephone and stuff it with rags
and when somebody knocked
I wouldn’t answer and if they persisted
I’d tell them in terms vulgar
to vanish.
just another old crank
with wings of gold
flabby white belly
plus
eyes to knock out
the sun.
a lovely couple
I had to take a shit
but instead I went
into this shop to
have a key made.
the woman was dressed
in gingham and smelled
like a muskrat.
“Ralph,” she hollered
and an old swine in a
/> flowered shirt and
size 6 shoes, her
husband, came out and
she said, “this man
wants a key.”
he started grinding
as if he really didn’t
want to.
there were slinking
shadows and urine
in the air.
I moved along the
glass counter,
pointed and called
to her,
“here, I want this
one.”
she handed it to
me: a switchblade
in a light purple
case.
$6.50 plus tax.
the key cost
practically
nothing.
I got my change and
walked out on
the street.
sometimes you need
people like that.
the strangest sight you ever did see—