walked to the market
once a week
for our government relief food:
cans of beans, cans of
weenies, cans of hash,
some potatoes, some
eggs.
we carried the supplies
in large shopping
bags.
and as we left the market
we always stopped
outside
where there was a large
window
where we could see the
bakers
kneading
the flour into the
dough.
there were 5 bakers,
large young men
and they stood at
5 large wooden tables
working very hard,
not looking up.
they flipped the dough in
the air
and all the sizes and
designs were
different.
we were always hungry
and the sight of the men
working the dough,
flipping it in the
air was a wondrous
sight, indeed.
but then, it would come time
to leave
and we would walk away
carrying our heavy
shopping bags.
“those men have jobs,”
my father would say.
he said it each time.
every time we watched
the bakers he would say
that.
“I think I’ve found a new way
to make the hash,”
my mother would say
each time.
or sometimes it was
the weenies.
we ate the eggs all
different ways:
fried, poached, boiled.
one of our favorites was
poached eggs on hash.
but that favorite finally
became almost impossible
to eat.
and the potatoes, we fried
them, baked them, boiled
them.
but the potatoes had a way
of not becoming as tiresome
as the hash, the eggs, the
beans.
one day, arriving home,
we placed all our foodstuffs
on the kitchen counter and
stared at them.
then we turned away.
“I’m going to hold up a
bank!” my father suddenly
said.
“oh no, Henry, please!”
said my mother,
“please don’t!”
“we’re going to eat some
steak, we’re going to eat
steaks until they come out
of our ears!”
“but Henry, you don’t have
a gun!”
“I’ll hold something in my
coat, I’ll pretend it’s a gun!”
“I’ve got a water pistol,”
I said, “you can use that.”
my father looked at me.
“you,” he said, “SHUT UP!”
I walked outside.
I sat on the back steps.
I could hear them in there
talking but I couldn’t quite make it
out.
then I could hear them again, it was
louder.
“I’ll find a new way to cook everything!”
my mother said.
“I’m going to rob a goddamned
bank!” my father said.
“Henry, please, please don’t!”
I heard my mother.
I got up from the steps.
walked away into the
afternoon.
secret laughter
the lair of the hunted is
hidden in the last place
you’d ever look
and even if you find it
you won’t believe
it’s really there
in much the same way
as the average person
will not believe a great painting.
Democracy
the problem, of course, isn’t the Democratic System,
it’s the
living parts which make up the Democratic System.
the next person you pass on the street,
multiply
him or
her by
3 or 4 or 30 or 40 million
and you will know
immediately
why things remain non-functional
for most of
us.
I wish I had a cure for the chess pieces
we call Humanity…
we’ve undergone any number of political
cures
and we all remain
foolish enough to hope
that the one on the way
NOW
will cure almost
everything.
fellow citizens,
the problem never was the Democratic
System, the problem is
you.
an empire of coins
the legs are gone and the hopes—the lava of outpouring,
and I haven’t shaved in sixteen days
but the mailman still makes his rounds and
water still comes out of the faucet and I have a photo of
myself with glazed and milky eyes full of simple music
in golden trunks and 8 oz. gloves when I made the semi-finals
only to be taken out by a German brute who should have been
locked in a cage for the insane and allowed to drink blood.
Now I am insane and stare at the wallpaper as one would stare
at a Dalí (he has lost it) or an early Picasso, and I send
the girls out for beer, the old girls who barely bother to wipe
their asses and say, “well, I guess I won’t comb my hair today:
it might bring me luck.” well, anyway, they wash the dishes and
chop the wood, and the landlady keeps insisting “let me in, I can’t
get in, you’ve got the lock on, and what’s all that singing and
cussing in there?” but she only wants a piece of ass while she pretends
she wants the rent
but she’s not going to get either one of ’em.
meanwhile the skulls of the dead are full of beetles and Shakespeare
and old football scores like S.C. 16, N.D. 14 on a John
Baker field goal.
I can see the fleet from my window, the sails and the guns, always
the guns poking their eyes in the sky looking for trouble like young
L.A. cops too young to shave, and the younger sailors out
there sex-hungry, trying to act tough, trying to act like men
but really closer to their mother’s nipples than to a true evaluation
of existence. I say god damn it, that
my legs are gone and the outpourings too. inside my brain
they cut and snip and
pour oil
to burn and fire out early dreams.
“darling,” says one of the girls, “you’ve got to snap out of it,
we’re running out of MONEY. how do you want
your toast?
light or dark?”
a woman’s a woman, I say, and I put my binoculars between her
kneecaps and I can see where
empires have fallen.
I wish I had a brush, some paint, some paint and a brush, I say.
“why?” asks one of the
whores.
BECAUSE RATS DON’T LIKE OIL! I scream.
(I can’t go on. I don’t belong here.) I listen to radio programs and
people’s voices talking and I marvel that they can get excited
and interested over nothing and I flick o
ut the lights, I
crash out the lights, and I pull the shades down, I
tear the shades down and I light my last cigar imagining
the dreamjump off the Empire State Building
into the thickheaded bullbrained mob with the hard-on attitude.
already forgotten are the dead of Normandy, Lincoln’s stringy beard,
all the bulls that have died to flashing red capes,
all the love that has died in real women and real men
while fools have been elevated to the trumpet’s succulent sneer
and I have fought red-handed and drunk
in slop-pitted alleys
the bartenders of this rotten land.
and I laugh, I can still laugh, who can’t laugh when the
whole thingis
so ridiculous
that only the insane, the clowns, the half-wits,
the cheaters, the whores, the horse players, the bankrobbers, the
poets…are interesting?
in the dark I hear the hands reaching for the last of my money
like mice nibbling at paper, automatic feeders on inbred
helplessness, a false drunken God asleep at the wheel…
a quarter rolls across the floor, and I remember all the faces
and
the football heroes, and everything has meaning, and an editor
writes me, you are good
but
you are too emotional
the way to whip life is to quietly frame the agony,
study it and put it to sleep in the abstract.
is there anything less abstract
than dying day by day?
The door closes and the last of the great whores are gone
and somehow no matter how they have
killed me, they are all great, and I smoke quietly
thinking of Mexico, the tired horses, of Havana
and Spain and Normandy, of the jabbering insane, of my dear
friends, of no more friends
ever; and the voice of my Mexican buddy saying, “you won’t die
you won’t die in the war, you’re too smart, you’ll take care
of yourself.”
I keep thinking of the bulls. the brave bulls dying every day.
the whores are gone. the bombing has stopped for a minute.
fuck everybody.
what?
sleepy now
at 4 a.m.
I hear the siren
of a white
ambulance,
then a dog
barks
once
in this tough-boy
Christmas
morning.
the American Flag Shirt
now more and more
all these people running around
wearing the American Flag Shirt
and it was more or less once assumed
(I think but I’m not sure)
that wearing an A.F.S. meant to
say you were pissing on
it
but now
they keep making them
and everybody keeps buying them
and wearing them
and the faces are just like
the American Flag Shirt—
this one has this face and that shirt
that one has that shirt and this face—
and somebody’s spending money
and somebody’s making money
and as the patriots become
more and more fashionable
it’ll be nice
when everybody looks around
and finds that they are all patriots now
and therefore
who is there left to
persecute
except their
children?
now she’s free
Cleo’s going to make it now
she’s got her shit together
she split with Barney
Barney wasn’t good for her
she got a bigger apartment
furnished it beautifully
and bought a new silver Camaro
she works afternoons in a dance joint
drives 30 miles to the job from
Redondo Beach
goes to night school
helps out at the AIDS clinic
reads the I Ching
does Yoga
is living with a 20-year-old boy
eats health food
Barney wasn’t good for her
she’s got her shit together now
she’s into T.M.
but she’s the same old fun-loving Cleo
she’s painted her nails green
got a butterfly tattoo
I saw her yesterday
in her new silver Camaro
her long blonde hair blowing
in the wind.
poor Barney.
he just doesn’t know what he’s
missing.
the simple truth
you just don’t know how to do it,
you know that,
and you can’t do a lot of other
useful things either.
it’s the fault of the
way you were raised,
some of it,
and you’ll never learn now,
it’s too late.
you just can’t do certain things.
I could show you how to do them
but you still wouldn’t do them
right.
I learned how to do a lot of necessary things
when I was a little girl
and I can still do them now.
I had good parents but
your parents never gave you enough
attention or love
so you never learned how to do
certain simple things.
I know it’s not your fault but
I think you should be aware of how
limited you are.
here, let me do that!
now watch me!
see how easy it is!
take your time!
you have no patience!
now look at you!
you’re mad, aren’t you?
I can tell.
you think I can’t tell?
I’m going downstairs now,
my favorite tv program is coming
on.
and don’t be mad because
I tell you the simple truth about
yourself.
do you want anything from
downstairs?
a snack?
no?
are you sure?
gold in your eye
I got into my BMW and drove down to my bank to
pick up my American Express Gold Card.
I told the girl at the desk what I
wanted.
“you’re Mr. Chinaski,” she
said.
“yes, you want some
i.d.?”
“oh no, we know you…”
I slipped the card into my wallet
went back to parking
got into the BMW (paid for, straight
cash)
and decided to drive down to the liquor store
for a case of fine
wine.
on the way, I further decided to write a poem
about the whole thing: the BMW, the bank, the
Gold Card
just to piss off the
critics
the writers
the readers
who much preferred the old poems about me
sleeping on park benches while
freezing and dying of cheap wine and
malnutrition.
this poem is for those who think that
a man can only be a creative
genius
at the very
edge
even though they never had the
guts to
tr
y it.
a great writer
a great writer remains in bed
shades down
doesn’t want to see anyone
doesn’t want to write anymore
doesn’t want to try anymore;
the editors and publishers wonder:
some say he’s insane
some say he’s dead;
his wife now answers all the mail:
“….e does not wish to…”
and some others even walk up and down
outside his house,
look at the pulled-down
shades;
some even go up and ring the
bell.
nobody answers.
the great writer does not want to be
disturbed. perhaps the great writer is not
in? perhaps the great writer has gone
away?
but they all want to know the truth,
to hear his voice, to be told some good
reason for it all.
if he has a reason