a lie.
the truth was just
too awful and
embarrassing to
tell.
then the bell rang
and recess was
over.
“thank you,” said Mrs.
Sorenson, “that was very
nice.
and tomorrow the grounds
will be dry
and we will put them
to use
again.”
most of the boys
cheered
and the little girls
sat very straight and
still,
looking so pretty and
clean and
alert,
their hair beautiful
in a sunshine that
the world might
never see
again.
marina:
majestic, magic
infinite
my little girl is
sun
on the carpet—
out the door
picking a
flower, ha!,
an old man,
battle-wrecked,
emerges from his
chair
and she looks at me
but only sees
love,
ha!, and I become
quick with the world
and love right back
just like I was meant
to do.
Trollius and trellises
of course, I may die in the next ten minutes
and I’m ready for that
but what I’m really worried about is
that my editor-publisher might retire
even though he is ten years younger than
I.
it was just 25 years ago (I was at that ripe
old age of 45)
when we began our unholy alliance to
test the literary waters,
neither of us being much
known.
I think we had some luck and still have some
of same
yet
the odds are pretty fair
that he will opt for warm and pleasant
afternoons
in the garden
long before I.
writing is its own intoxication
while publishing and editing,
attempting to collect bills
carries its own
attrition
which also includes dealing with the
petty bitchings and demands
of many
so-called genius darlings who are
not.
I won’t blame him for getting
out
and hope he sends me photos of his
Rose Lane, his
Gardenia Avenue.
will I have to seek other
promulgators?
that fellow in the Russian
fur hat?
or that beast in the East
with all that hair
in his ears, with those wet and
greasy lips?
or will my editor-publisher
upon exiting for that world of Trollius and
trellis
hand over the
machinery
of his former trade to a
cousin, a
daughter or
some Poundian from Big
Sur?
or will he just pass the legacy on
to the
Shipping Clerk
who will rise like
Lazarus,
fingering newfound
importance?
one can imagine terrible
things:
“Mr. Chinaski, all your work
must now be submitted in
Rondo form
and
typed
triple-spaced on rice
paper.”
power corrupts,
life aborts
and all you
have left
is a
bunch of
warts.
“no, no, Mr. Chinaski:
Rondo form!”
“hey, man,” I’ll ask,
“haven’t you heard of
the thirties?”
“the thirties? what’s
that?”
my present editor-publisher
and I
at times
did discuss the thirties,
the Depression
and
some of the little tricks it
taught us—
like how to endure on almost
nothing
and move forward
anyhow.
well, John, if it happens enjoy your
divertissement to
plant husbandry,
cultivate and aerate
between
bushes, water only in the
early morning, spread
shredding to discourage
weed growth
and
as I do in my writing:
use plenty of
manure.
and thank you
for locating me there at
5124 DeLongpre Avenue
somewhere between
alcoholism and
madness.
together we
laid down the gauntlet
and there are takers
even at this late date
still to be
found
as the fire sings
through the
trees.
beagle
do not bother the beagle lying there
away from grass and flowers and paths,
dreaming dogdreams, or perhaps dreaming
nothing, as men do awake;
yes, leave him be, in that simple juxtaposition,
out of the maelstrom, lucifugous as a bat,
searching bat-inward
for a state of grace.
it’s good. we’ll not ransom our fate
or his for doorknobs or rasps.
the east wind whirls the blinds,
our beagle snuffles in his sleep as
outside, outside,
hedges break, the night torn mad
with footsteps.
our beagle spreads a paw,
the lamp burns warm
bathed in the life of his
size.
coffee and babies
I sleep at Lila’s and in the morning
we get the breakfast special at the local cafe,
then it’s up to her friend Buffy’s.
Buffy has boy twins, father in doubt, and lives on relief
in a $150-a-month apt.
the twins wail, crawl about, I pick one up, he pulls at
my goatee.
“how nice,” I say, “to be sitting with 2 lovely ladies
at ten in the morning in the city of Burbank while
other men work.”
every time the twins get changed I note they have hard-ons
(their troubles begin at the age of one)
and their asses are red with rash and sadness.
“I used to open and close the bars,” I say,
“I used to whip men 20 years younger than myself. now I sit
with women and babies.”
we have our coffees. I borrow a cigarette. (Buffy knows I
am good for it. I’ll buy her a pack
later.) the girls joke about my ugly face.
I smoke. after this I need some profundities but
Buddha doesn’t help much.
Buffy gets up and shakes her behind at me:
“you can’t have me, Chinaski, you’re too old, you’re too
ugly.”
well, you see, it’s difficult for me. Lila and I finish
our coffees and climb down the green steps to the
blue-gre
en
swimming pool. it is 11 a.m. India and Pakistan are at
war. we get into my smashed ’62 Comet. it
starts. well, we can go to the races, we can screw again,
we can sleep, we can have a Mexican marriage, we can argue
and split or she can read to me about fresh murders in the
Herald-Examiner.
it ends up
we argue and split and I forget to go get
Buffy her pack of
cigarettes.
(uncollected)
magical mystery tour
I am in this low-slung sports car
painted a deep, rich yellow
driving under an Italian sun.
I have a British accent.
I’m wearing dark shades
an expensive silk shirt.
there’s no dirt under my
fingernails.
the radio plays Vivaldi
and there are two women with
me
one with raven hair
the other a blonde.
they have small breasts and
beautiful legs
and they laugh at everything I
say.
as we drive up a steep road
the blonde squeezes my leg
and nestles closer
while raven hair
leans across and nibbles my
ear.
we stop for lunch at a quaint
rustic inn.
there is more laughter
before lunch
during lunch and after
lunch.
after lunch we will have a
flat tire on the other side of
the mountain
and the blonde will change the
tire
while
raven hair
photographs me
lighting my pipe
leaning against a tree
the perfect background
perfectly at peace
with
sunlight
flowers
clouds
birds
everywhere.
(uncollected)
the last generation
it was much easier to be a genius in the twenties, there were
only 3 or 4 literary magazines and if you got into them
4 or 5 times you could end up in Gertie’s parlor
you could possibly meet Picasso for a glass of wine, or
maybe only Miró.
and yes, if you sent your stuff postmarked from Paris
chances of publication became much better.
most writers bottomed their manuscripts with the
word “Paris” and the date.
and with a patron there was time to
write, eat, drink and take drives to Italy and sometimes
Greece.
it was good to be photo’d with others of your kind
it was good to look tidy, enigmatic and thin.
photos taken on the beach were great.
and yes, you could write letters to the 15 or 20
others
bitching about this and that.
you might get a letter from Ezra or from Hem; Ezra liked
to give directions and Hem liked to practice his writing
in his letters when he couldn’t do the other.
it was a romantic grand game then, full of the fury of
discovery.
now
now there are so many of us, hundreds of literary magazines,
hundreds of presses, thousands of titles.
who is to survive out of all this mulch?
it’s almost improper to ask.
I go back, I read the books about the lives of the boys
and girls of the twenties.
if they were the Lost Generation, what would you call us?
sitting here among the warheads with our electric-touch
typewriters?
the Last Generation?
I’d rather be Lost than Last but as I read these books about
them
I feel a gentleness and a generosity
as I read of the suicide of Harry Crosby in his hotel room
with his whore
that seems as real to me as the faucet dripping now
in my bathroom sink.
I like to read about them: Joyce blind and prowling the
bookstores like a tarantula, they said.
Dos Passos with his clipped newscasts using a pink typewriter
ribbon.
D.H. horny and pissed off, H.D. being smart enough to use
her initials which seemed much more literary than Hilda
Doolittle.
G. B. Shaw, long established, as noble and
dumb as royalty, flesh and brain turning to marble. a
bore.
Huxley promenading his brain with great glee, arguing
with Lawrence that it wasn’t in the belly and the balls,
that the glory was in the skull.
and that hick Sinclair Lewis coming to light.
meanwhile
the revolution being over, the Russians were liberated and
dying.
Gorky with nothing to fight for, sitting in a room trying
to find phrases praising the government.
many others broken in victory.
now
now there are so many of us
but we should be grateful, for in a hundred years
if the world is not destroyed, think, how much
there will be left of all of this:
nobody really able to fail or to succeed—just
relative merit, diminished further by
our numerical superiority.
we will all be cata logued and filed.
all right…
if you still have doubts of those other golden
times
there were other curious creatures: Richard
Aldington, Teddy Dreiser, F. Scott, Hart Crane, Wyndham Lewis, the
Black Sun Press.
but to me, the twenties centered mostly on Hemingway
coming out of the war and beginning to type.
it was all so simple, all so deliciously clear
now
there are so many of us.
Ernie, you had no idea how good it had been
four de cades later when you blew your brains into
the orange juice
although
I grant you
that was not your best work.
about competition
the higher you climb
the greater the pressure.
those who manage to
endure
learn
that the distance
between the
top and the
bottom
is
obscenely
great.
and those who
succeed
know
this secret:
there isn’t
one.
a radio with guts
it was on the 2nd floor on Coronado Street
I used to get drunk
and throw the radio through the window
while it was playing, and, of course,
it would break the glass in the window
and the radio would sit out there on the roof
still playing
and I’d tell my woman,
“Ah, what a marvelous radio!”
the next morning I’d take the window
off the hinges
and carry it down the street
to the glass man
who would put in another pane.
I kept throwing that radio through the window
each time I got drunk
and it would sit out there on the roof
still playing—
a magic radio
a radio with gut
s,
and each morning I’d take the window
back to the glass man.
I don’t remember how it ended exactly
though I do remember
we finally moved out.
there was a woman downstairs who worked in
the garden in her bathing suit
and her husband complained he couldn’t sleep nights
because of me
so we moved out
and in the next place
I either forgot to throw the radio out the window
or I didn’t feel like it
anymore.
I do remember missing the woman who worked in the
garden in her bathing suit,
she really dug with that trowel
and she put her behind up in the air
and I used to sit in the window
and watch the sun shine all over that thing
while the music played.
the egg
he’s 17.
mother, he said, how do I crack an