The Pleasures of the Damned

  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