no answer from me.
“isn’t he?”
“yes.”
but in my mind I changed it to, yes,
he can poop.
he looked like a poop.
the whole world pooped while I
was knotted up inside like a pretzel.
then we would walk out on the street
and I would look at the people passing
and all the people had behinds.
“that’s all I ever noticed,” he told me,
“it was horrible.”
“we must have had similar
childhoods,” I said.
“somehow, that doesn’t help at all,”
he said.
“we’ve both got to get over this
thing,” I said.
“I’m trying,” he
answered.
Phillipe’s 1950
Phillipe’s is an old time
cafe off Alameda street
just a little north and east of
the main post office.
Phillipe’s opens at 5 a.m.
and serves a cup of coffee
with cream and sugar
for a nickel.
in the early mornings
the bums come down off Bunker Hill,
as they say,
“with our butts wrapped
around our ears.”
Los Angeles nights have a way
of getting very
cold.
“Phillipe’s,” they say,
“is the only place that doesn’t
hassle us.”
the waitresses are old
and most of the bums are
too.
come down there some
early morning.
for a nickel
you can see the most beautiful faces
in town.
downtown
nobody goes downtown anymore
the plants and trees have been cut away around
Pershing Square
the grass is brown
and the street preachers are not as good
as they used to be
and down on Broadway
the Latinos stand in long colorful lines
waiting to see Latino action movies.
I walk down to Clifton’s cafeteria
it’s still there
the waterfall is still there
the few white faces are old and poor
dignified
dressed in 1950s clothing
sitting at small tables on the first
floor.
I take my food upstairs to the
third floor—
all Latinos at the tables there
faces more tired than hostile
the men at rest from their factory jobs
their once beautiful wives now
heavy and satisfied
the men wanting badly to go out and raise hell
but now the money is needed for
clothing, tires, toys, TV sets
children’s shoes, the rent.
I finish eating
walk down to the first floor and out,
and nearby is a penny arcade.
I remember it from the 1940s.
I walk in.
it is full of young Latinos and Blacks
between the ages of six and
fifteen
and they shoot machine guns
play mechanical soccer
and the piped-in salsa music is very
loud.
they fly spacecraft
test their strength
fight in the ring
have horse races
auto races
but none of them want their fortunes told.
I lean against a wall and
watch them.
I go outside again.
I walk down and across from the Herald-
Examiner building
where my car is parked.
I get in. then I drive away.
it’s Sunday. and it’s true
like they say: the old gang never
goes downtown anymore.
elephants in the zoo
in the afternoon
they lean against
one another
and you can see how much
they like the sun.
(uncollected)
girl on the escalator
as I go to the escalator
a young fellow and a lovely young girl
are ahead of me.
her pants, her blouse are skintight.
as we ascend
she rests one foot on the
step above and her behind
assumes a fascinating shape.
the young man looks all
around.
he appears worried.
he looks at me.
I look
away.
no, young man, I am not looking,
I am not looking at your girl’s behind.
don’t worry, I respect her and I respect you.
in fact, I respect everything: the flowers that grow, young women,
children, all the animals, our precious complicated
universe, everyone and everything.
I sense that the young man now feels
better and I am glad for
him. I know his problem: the girl has
a mother, a father, maybe a sister or
brother, and undoubtedly a bunch of
unfriendly relatives and she likes to
dance and flirt and she likes to
go to the movies and sometimes she talks
and chews gum at the same time and
she enjoys really dumb TV shows and
she thinks she’s a budding actress and she
doesn’t always look so good and she has a
terrible temper and sometimes she almost goes
crazy and she can talk for hours on the
telephone and she wants to go to
Europe some summer soon and she wants you to
buy her a near-new Mercedes and she’s in love with
Mel Gibson and her mother is a
drunk and her father is a racist
and sometimes when she drinks too much she
snores and she’s often cold in bed and
she has a guru, a guy who met Christ
in the desert in 1978, and she wants to
be a dancer and she’s unemployed and she
gets migraine headaches every time she
eats sugar or cheese.
I watch him take her
up
the escalator, his arm
protectively about her
waist, thinking he’s
lucky,
thinking he’s a real special
guy, thinking that
nobody in the world has
what he has.
and he’s right, terribly
terribly right, his arm around
that warm bucket of
intestine,
bladder,
kidneys,
lungs,
salt,
sulphur,
carbon dioxide
and
phlegm.
lotsa
luck.
the shit shits
yes, it’s dark in here.
can’t open the door.
can’t open the jam lid.
can’t find a pair of socks that match.
I was born in Andernach in 1920 and never thought it
would be like this.
at the races today I was standing in the 5-win line.
this big fat guy with body odor
kept jamming his binoculars into my ass and I turned and
said,
“pardon me, sir. could you please stop jamming those goddamned
binocs into my ass?”
he just looked at me with little pig eyes—
&nbs
p; rather pink with olive pits for pupils—
and the eyes just kept looking at me until I stepped away and then
got sick, vomited into a
trash can.
I keep getting letters from an uncle in Andernach who must be
95 years old and he keeps asking,
“my boy, why don’t you WRITE?”
what can I write him? unfortunately
there is nothing that I can write.
I pull on my shorts and they rip.
sleep is impossible, I mean good sleep. I just get
small spurts of it, and then back to the job where the foreman
comes by:
“Chinaski, for a pieceworker you crawl like a snail!”
I’m sick and I’m tired and I don’t know where to go or what to do.
well, at lunchtime we all ride down the elevator together
making jokes and laughing
and then we sit in the employees’ cafeteria making jokes and
laughing and eating the recooked food;
first they buy it then they fry it
then they reheat it then they sell it, can’t be a germ left in there
or a vitamin either.
but we joke and laugh
otherwise we would start
screaming.
on Saturday and Sunday when I don’t have money to go to the track
I just lay in bed.
I never get out of bed.
I don’t want to go to a movie;
it is shameful for a full-grown man to go to a movie alone.
and women are less than nothing. they terrify
me.
I wonder what Andernach is like?
I think that if they would let me just stay in bed I could
get well or strong or at least feel better;
but it’s always up and back to the machine,
searching for stockings that match,
shorts that won’t tear,
looking at my face in the mirror, disgusted with
my face.
my uncle, what is he thinking with his crazy
letters?
we are all little forgotten pieces of shit
only we walk and talk
laugh
make jokes
and
the shit shits.
some day I will tell that foreman off.
I will tell everybody off.
and walk down to the end of the road and
make swans out of the blackbirds and
lions out of berry leaves.
(uncollected)
big time loser
I was on the train to Del Mar and I left my seat
to go to the bar car. I had a beer and came
back and sat down.
“pardon me,” said the lady next to me, “but you’re
sitting in my husband’s seat.”
“oh yeah?” I said. I picked up my Racing Form
and began studying it. the first race looked tough. then a man was standing there. “hey, buddy,
you’re in my seat!”
“I already told him,” said the lady, “but he didn’t pay
any attention.”
“This is my seat!” I told the man.
“it’s bad enough he takes my seat,” said the man looking
around, “but now he’s reading my Racing Form!”
I looked up at him, he was puffing his chest out.
“look at you,” I said, “puffing your goddamned
chest out!”
“you’re in my seat, buddy!” he told me.
“look,” I said, “I’ve been in this seat since the
train left the station. ask anybody!”
“no, that’s not right,” said a man behind me,
“he had that seat when the train left the
station!” “are you sure?”
“sure I’m sure!”
I got up and walked to the next train car.
there was my empty seat by the window and there was
my Racing Form.
I went back to the other car. the
man was reading his Racing Form.
“hey,” I started to say…
“forget it,” said the man.
“just leave us alone,” said his wife.
I walked back to my car, sat down and
looked out the window
pretending to be interested in the land-
scape,
happy that the people in my car didn’t know what
the people in the other car knew.
commerce
I used to drive those trucks so hard
and for so long that
my right foot would
go dead from pushing down on the
accelerator.
delivery after delivery,
14 hours at a time
for $1.10 per hour
under the table,
up one-way alleys in the worst parts of
town.
at midnight or at high noon,
racing between tall buildings
always with the stink of something
dying or about to die
in the freight elevator
at your destination,
a self-operated elevator,
opening into a large bright room,
uncomfortably so
under unshielded lights
over the heads of many women
each bent mute over a machine,
crucified alive
on piecework,
to hand the package then
to a fat son of a bitch in red
suspenders.
he signs, ripping through the cheap
paper
with his ballpoint pen,
that’s power,
that’s America at work.
you think of killing him
on the spot
but discard that thought and
leave,
down into the urine-stinking
elevator,
they have you crucified too,
America at work,
where they rip out your intestines
and your brain and your
will and your spirit.
they suck you dry, then throw
you away.
the capitalist system.
the work ethic.
the profit motive.
the memory of your father’s words,
“work hard and you’ll be
appreciated.”
of course, only if you make
much more for them than they pay
you.
out of the alley and into the
sunlight again,
into heavy traffic,
planning the route to your next stop,
the best way, the time-
saver,
you knowing none of the tricks
and to actually think about
all the deliveries that still lie ahead
would lead to
madness.
it’s one at a time,
easing in and out of traffic
between other work-driven drivers
also with no concept of danger,
reality, flow or
compassion.
you can feel the despair
escaping from their
machines,
their lives as hopeless and
as numbed as
yours.
you break through the cluster
of them
on your way to the next
stop,
driving through teeming downtown
Los Angeles in 1952,
stinking and hungover,
no time for lunch,
no time for coffee,
you’re on route #10,
a new man,
give the new man the
ball-busting route,
see if he can swallow the
&nb
sp; whale.
you look down and the
needle is on
red.
almost no gas left.
too fucking bad.
you gun it,
lighting a crushed cigarette with
one hand from a soiled pack of
matches.
shit on the world.
come on in!
welcome to my wormy hell.
the music grinds off-key.
fish eyes watch from the wall.
this is where the last happy shot was
fired.
the mind snaps closed
like a mind snapping
closed.
we need to discover a new will and a new
way.
we’re stuck here now
listening to the laughter of the
gods.
my temples ache with the fact of
the facts.
I get up, move about, scratch
myself.
I’m a pawn.
I am a hungry prayer.
my wormy hell welcomes you.
hello. hello there. come in, come on in!
plenty of room here for us all,
sucker.
we can only blame ourselves so
come sit with me in the dark.
it’s half-past
nowhere
everywhere.
the bakers of 1935
my mother, father and I