Manuel sat by the window and looked out
and didn’t make his job
the next day or the
next day or
the day after, he
didn’t phone in, he
lost his job, got a
ticket for parking, smoked
four hundred and sixty cigarettes, got
picked up for common drunk, bailed
out, went
to court and pleaded
guilty.
when the rent was up he
moved from Beacon street, he
left the cat and went to live with
his brother and
they’d get drunk
every night
and talk about how
terrible
life was.
Manuel never again smoked
long slim cigars
because Shirley always said
how
handsome he looked
when he did.
$$$$$$
I’ve always had trouble with
money.
this one place I worked
everybody ate hot dogs
and potato chips
in the company cafeteria for
3 days before each
payday.
I wanted steaks,
I even went to see the manager
of the cafeteria and
demanded that he serve
steaks. he refused.
I’d forget payday.
I had a high rate of absenteeism and
payday would arrive and everybody would
start talking about
it.
“payday?” I’d say, “hell, is this
payday? I forgot to pick up my
last check…”
“stop the bullshit, man…”
“no, no, I mean it…”
I’d jump up and go down to payroll
and sure enough there’d be a
check and I’d come back and show it
to them. “Jesus Christ, I forgot all about
it…”
for some reason they’d get
angry. then the payroll clerk would come
around. I’d have two
checks. “Jesus,” I’d say, “two checks.”
and they were
angry.
some of them were working
two jobs.
the worst day
it was raining very hard,
I didn’t have a raincoat so
I put on a very old coat I hadn’t worn for
months and
I walked in a little late
while they were working.
I looked in the coat for some
cigarettes
and found a 5 dollar bill
in the side pocket:
“hey, look,” I said, “I just found a 5 dollar
bill I didn’t know I had, that’s
funny.”
“hey, man, knock off the
shit!”
“no, no, I’m serious, really, I remember
wearing this coat when
I got drunk at the
bars. I’ve been rolled too often,
I’ve got this fear…I take money out of
my wallet and hide it all
over me.”
“sit down and get to
work.”
I reached into an inside pocket:
“hey, look, here’s a TWENTY! God, here’s a
TWENTY I never knew I
had! I’m
RICH!”
“you’re not funny, son of
a bitch…”
“hey, my God, here’s ANOTHER
twenty! too much, too too
much…I knew I didn’t spend all that
money that night. I thought I’d been
rolled again…”
I kept searching the
coat. “hey! here’s a ten and
here’s a fiver! my God…”
“listen, I’m telling you to sit down
and shut up…”
“my God, I’m RICH…I don’t even need
this job…”
“man, sit down…”
I found another ten after I sat down
but I didn’t say
anything.
I could feel waves of hatred and
I was confused,
they believed I had
plotted the whole thing
just to make them
feel bad. I didn’t want
to. people who live on hot dogs and
potato chips for
3 days before payday
feel bad
enough.
I sat down
leaned forward and
began to go to
work.
outside
it continued to
rain.
sitting in a sandwich joint
my daughter is most
glorious.
we are eating a takeout
snack in my car
in Santa Monica.
I say, “hey, kid,
my life has been
good, so good.”
she looks at me.
I put my head down
on the steering wheel,
shudder, then I
kick the door open,
put on a
mock-puke.
I straighten up.
she laughs
biting into her
sandwich.
I pick up four
french fries
put them into my mouth,
chew them.
it’s 5:30 p.m.
and the cars run up
and down past us.
I sneak a look:
we’ve got all the
luck we need:
her eyes are brilliant with the
remainder of the
day, and she’s
grinning.
doom and siesta time
my friend is worried about dying
he lives in Frisco
I live in L.A.
he goes to the gym and
works with the iron and hits
the big bag.
old age diminishes him.
he can’t drink because of
his liver.
he can do
50 pushups.
he writes me
letters
telling me
that I’m the only one
who listens to him.
sure, Hal, I answer him
on a postcard.
but I don’t want to pay
all those gym fees.
I go to bed
with a liverwurst and
onion sandwich at
one p.m.
after I eat I
nap
with the helicopters
and vultures
circling over my
sagging mattress.
as crazy as I ever was
drunk and writing poems
at 3 a.m.
what counts now
is one more
tight
pussy
before the light
tilts out
drunk and writing poems
at 3:15 a.m.
some people tell me that I’m
famous.
what am I doing alone
drunk and writing poems at
3:18 a.m.?
I’m as crazy as I ever was
they don’t understand
that I haven’t stopped hanging out of 4th floor
windows by my heels—
I still do
right now
sitting here
writing this down
I am hanging by my heels
floors up:
68, 72, 101,
the feeling is the
same:
relentless
unheroic and
necessary
sitting here
drunk and writing poems
at 3:24 a.m.
sex
I am driving down Wilton Avenue
when this girl of about 15
dressed in tight blue jeans
that grip her behind like two hands
steps out in front of my car
I stop to let her cross the street
and as I watch her contours waving
she looks directly through my windshield
at me
with purple eyes
and then blows
out of her mouth
the largest pink globe of
bubble gum
I have ever seen
while I am listening to Beethoven
on the car radio.
she enters a small grocery store
and is gone
and I am left with
Ludwig.
dead now
I always wanted to ball
Henry Miller, she said,
but by the time I got there
it was too late.
damn it, I said, you girls
always arrive too late.
I’ve already masturbated
twice today.
that wasn’t his problem,
she said. by the way,
how come you flog-off
so much?
it’s the space, I said,
all that space between
poems and stories, it’s
intolerable.
you should wait, she said,
you’re impatient.
what do you think of Celine?
I asked.
I wanted to ball him too.
dead now, I said.
dead now, she said.
care to hear a little
music? I asked.
might as well, she said.
I gave her Ives.
that’s all I had left
that night.
twins
hey, said my friend, I want you to meet
Hangdog Harry, he reminds me of you,
and I said, all right, and we went to
this cheap hotel.
old men sitting around watching
some program on the tv in the lobby
as we went up the stairway
to 209 and there was Hangdog
sitting in a straight strawback chair
bottle of wine at his feet
last year’s calendar on the wall,
“you guys sit down,” he said,
“that’s the problem:
man’s inhumanity to man.”
we watched him slowly roll a
Bull Durham cigarette.
“I’ve got a 17 inch neck and I’ll kill
anybody who fucks with me.”
he licked his cigarette
then spit on the rug.
“just like home here. feel free.”
“how you feeling, Hangdog?” asked
my friend.
“terrible. I’m in love with a whore,
haven’t seen her in 3 or 4 weeks.”
“what you think she’s doing, Hang?”
“well, right now about now I’d say
she’s sucking some turkeyneck.”
he picked up his wine bottle
took a tremendous drain.
“look,” my friend said to Hangdog,
“we’ve got to get going.”
“o.k., time and tide, they don’t
wait…”
he looked at me:
“whatcha say your name was?”
“Salomski.”
“pleased to meet cha, kid.”
“likewise.”
we went down the stairway
they were still in the lobby
looking at t.v.
“what did you think of him?”
my friend asked.
“shit,” I said, “he was really
all right. yes.”
the place didn’t look bad
she had huge thighs
and a very good laugh
she laughed at everything
and the curtains were yellow
and I finished
rolled off
and before she went to the bathroom
she reached under the bed and
threw me a rag.
it was hard
it was stiff with other men’s
sperm.
I wiped off on the sheet.
when she came out
she bent over
and I saw all that behind
as she put Mozart
on.
the little girls
up in northern California
he stood in the pulpit
and had been reading for some time
he had been reading poems about
nature and the goodness
of man.
he knew that everything was all
right and you couldn’t blame him:
he was a professor and had never
been in jail or in a whorehouse
had never had a used car die
in a traffic jam;
had never needed more than
3 drinks during his wildest
evening;
had never been rolled, flogged,
mugged,
had never been bitten by a dog
he got nice letters from Gary
Snyder, and his face was
kindly, unmarked and
tender.
his wife had never betrayed him,
nor had his luck.
he said, “I’m just going to read
3 more poems and then I’m going
to step down and let
Bukowski read.”
“oh no, William,” said all the
little girls in their pink and blue
and white and orange and lavender
dresses, “oh no, William,
read some more, read some
more!”
he read one more poem and then he said,
“this will be the last poem that
I will read.”
“oh no, William,” said all the little
girls in their red and green see-through
dresses, “oh no, William,” said
all the little girls in their tight blue
jeans with little hearts sewn on them,
“oh no, William,” said all the little girls,
“read more poems, read more poems!”
but he was good to his word.
he got the poem out and he climbed down and
vanished. as I got up to read
the little girls wiggled in
their seats and some of them hissed and
some of them made remarks to me
which I will use at some later date.
two or three weeks later
I got a letter from William
saying that he did enjoy my reading.
a true gentleman.
I was in bed in my underwear with a
3 day hangover. I lost the envelope
but I took the letter and folded it
into a paper airplane such as
I had learned to make in grammar
school. it sailed about the room
before landing between an old Racing Form
and a pair of shit-stained shorts.
we have not corresponded since.
rain or shine
the vultures at the zoo
(all 3 of them)
sit very quietly in their
caged tree
and below
on the ground
are chunks of rotting meat.
the vultures are over-full.
our taxes have fed them
well.
we move on to the next
cage.
a man is in there
sitt
ing on the ground
eating
his own shit.
I recognize him as
our former mailman.
his favorite expression
had been:
“have a beautiful day.”
that day, I did.
cold plums
eating cold plums in bed
she told me about the German
who owned everything on the block
except the custom drapery shop
and he tried to buy
the custom drapery shop
but the girls said, no.
the German had the best grocery store in
Pasadena, his meats were high
but worth the price