a good book
can make an almost
impossible
existence,
liveable

for the reader
and
the writer.

If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery–isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.

I was so thin I could slice bread with my shoulderblades, only I seldom had bread.

Life wore a man out, wore a man thin.
Tomorrow would be a better day.

and when love came to us twice
and lied to us twice
we decided to never love again
that was fair
fair to us
and fair to love itself.

we ask

The gods have been kind to me through this life-style that would have killed an ox of a man and I’m no ox of a man.

she’s half-insane, looking for an out; she’s hard, she’s scared, she’s been fooled, taken, abused, used, over-used . . .
but, under all that, to me she’s the flower, I see her as she was before she was ruined by the lies: theirs and hers.

the courage it took to get out of bed each
morning
to face the same things
over and over
was
enormous.

If you persisted long enough, the good luck usually came. Most people couldn’t wait on the luck, though, so they quit.

It is possible to be truly mad and to still exist upon scraps of life.

I walked about naked and barefoot
stepping onto shards of glass
sometimes feeling it
sometimes not.

There’s nothing to stop a man from writing unless that man stops himself. If a man truly desires to write, then he will. Rejection and ridicule will only strengthen him. And the longer he is held back the stronger he will become, like a mass of rising water against a dam. There is no losing in writing, it will make your toes laugh as you sleep, it will make you stride like a tiger, it will fire the eye and put you face to face with death. You will die a fighter, you will be honored in hell. The luck of the word. Go with it, send it.

There is nothing that teaches you more than regrouping after failure and moving on. Yet most people are stricken with fear. They fear failure so much that they fail. They are too conditioned, too used to being told what to do. It begins with the family, runs through school and goes into the business world.

Perhaps living through these petty days will get us ready for the dangerous ones.

Now, all there is to do is reset broken moments. When even to exist seems a victory.

I knew that I was dying.
Something in me said,
Go ahead, die, sleep, become as them, accept.
Then something else in me said, no,
save the tiniest bit.
It needn’t be much, just a spark.
A spark can set a whole forest on fire.
Just a spark.
Save it.

it’s moments like
this – you can feel it
happening – that you grow
transformed
partly into something
else strange and
unimaginable—
so when death comes
it can only take
part of
you.

those who escape hell
however
never talk about
it
and nothing much
bothers them
after
that.

What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.

I was tired and wet and hungover, but I was usually that way and I waded through the weariness like I did the water.

mainly thinking, well,
I’m still alive
and have the ability to expel wastes from my body
and poems.
and as long as that’s happening
I have the ability to handle
betrayal
loneliness
hangnail
clap
and the economic reports in the
financial section.

Goodness can be found sometimes in the middle of hell.

I suppose like others
I have come through fire and sword,
love gone wrong,
head-on crashes, drunk at sea,
and I have listened to the simple sound of water running
in tubs
and wished to drown.

You have to die a few times before you can really live.

Well, I don’t know about you but I’m going to try everything! War, women, travel, marriage, children, the works. […]. I want to know about things, what makes them work!

I’m tired of waiting to die. Let’s go out.

After dinner or lunch or whatever it was — with my crazy 12-hour night I was no longer sure what was what — I said, “Look, baby, I’m sorry, but don’t you realize that this job is driving me crazy? Look, let’s give it up. Let’s just lay around and make love and take walks and talk a little. Let’s go to the zoo. Let’s look at animals. Let’s drive down and look at the ocean. It’s only 45 minutes. Let’s play games in the arcades. Let’s go to the races, the Art Museum, the boxing matches. Let’s have friends. Let’s laugh. This kind of life like everybody else’s kind of life: it’s killing us.”

how can you be true and
kind at the same
time?

how?

He was so pitiful that I couldn’t tell him to get lost.

“God,” prayed my grandmother, “purge the devil from this poor boy’s body! Just look at all those sores! They make me sick, God! Look at

Pain is strange. A cat killing a bird, a car accident, a fire…. Pain arrives, BANG, and there it is, it sits on you. It’s

Those faces you see every day on the streets were not created entirely without hope: be kind to them: like you they have not escaped.

Dogs and angels are not very far apart.

Look, let me put it this way: with me, you’re number one and there isn’t even a number two.

You were destroyed by what you befriended.

It’s almost entirely waste. Regret is mostly caused by not having done anything. The mind barks like a dog.

The Florida State Department of Employment was a pleasant place. It wasn’t as crowded as the Los Angeles office which was always full. It was my turn for a little good luck, not much, but a little. It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?

Ambition rarely has anything to do with talent. Luck is best, and talent limps along a little bit behind luck.

All a guy needed was a chance. Somebody was alway controlling who got a chance and who didn’t.

Sometimes things are just what they seem to be and that’s all there is to it. The best interpreter of the dream is the dreamer.

anything,
compared to the people,
is a foundation worth
searching for.

anything.

a life can change in a tenth of
a second.
or sometimes it can take
70
years.

We don’t even ask happiness, just a little less pain.

Great art is horseshit, buy tacos.

it was one of those times where nothing was lost because
nothing
had ever been found.

It took me a long time to find the most interesting person to drink with: myself.

It seemed less real, and that was what was needed.

There are certainly any number of lonely people without much to do with their nights.

it’s when you’re on the row
that you notice that
everything
is owned
and that there are locks on
everything.

we are the sickest of the breed–as fine museums–great art–
generations of knowledge–are all forgotten
as we find profundity in being an
asshole.

It’s the dream that keeps you going then and now.

We only have ourselves to go on, and it’s enough . . .

Nothing matters and we know nothing matters and that matters…

Please have some cheer: agony sometimes changes form but it never ceases for anybody.

Complaint is often the result of an insufficient ability to live within the obvious restrictions of this god damned cage.

one doesn’t even think of
the liver
and if the liver
doesn’t think of
us, that’s
fine.

when you’re young
a pair of
female
high-heeled shoes
just sitting
alone
in the closet
can fire your
bones;
when you’re old
it’s just
a pair of shoes
without
anybody
in them
and
just as
well.

I believe that to be the world’s greatest living
writer
there must be something
terribly wrong with you.
I don’t even want to be the world’s greatest
dead writer.
just being dead would be fair
enough.

The gods play no favorites.

sometimes it’s hard to know
what to
do.

the gods seldom
give
but so quickly
take.

it does seem
the more we drink
the better the words
go.

the best part was
pulling down the
shades
stuffing the doorbell
with rags
putting the phone
in the
refrigerator
and going to bed
for 3 or 4
days.
and the next best
part
was
nobody ever
missed
me.

and even the trees we walked
under
seemed
less than
trees
and more like everything
else.

there’s no clarity.
there was never meant to be clarity.

having nothing to struggle
against
they have nothing to struggle
for.

Now something so sad has hold of us that the breath leaves and we can’t even cry.

as the shadows assume
shapes
I fight the slow
retreat

now
my once-promise
dwindling
dwindling

now
lighting new cigarettes
pouring more
drinks

it has been a beautiful
fight

still
is.

Speed like a leper’s tongue on a virgin tit.

Getting out of bed in the morning was the same as facing the blank wall of the Universe.

Most of the world was mad. And the part that wasn’t mad was angry. And the part that wasn’t mad or angry was just stupid.

We are simply a part of the machinery of the moment.

But trouble and pain were what kept a man alive. Or trying to avoid trouble and pain. It was a full time job.

Who knows? Insanity is comparative. Who sets the norm?

What a pitiful mass of dangerous nothing.

You don’t go on “probably” when love and guns are in hand.

There is always somebody about to ruin your day, if not your life.

Well, the rain had stopped but the pain was still there.

and you turn over
to your left side
to get the sun
on your back
and out
of your eyes.

Love is not a candle burning down. Life is. And love and life are not the same or else Love, having choice, nobody would ever die.

you are
yesterday’s
bouquet so sadly
raided.

There is no hurry. Time means nothing to you.

Our disappointment sits between us.

Beware
Those Who
Are ALWAYS
READING
BOOKS.

You’ve got to know when to let a woman go if you want to keep her, and if you don’t want to keep her you let her go anyhow so it’s always a process of letting go, one way or the other.

people run from rain but
sit
in bathtubs full of
water.

we only pretend to live
while we wait on something.

The doorbell rang like a rape, or the tearing of ripe flesh.

gratuitous masturbation
of the
psyche.

being alone you decided, was a
magnificent miracle.
nothing else made any
sense at all.

(the whole world is at the
throat of the world,
everybody feels angry,
short-changed, cheated,
everybody is despondent,
disillusioned.)

I welcomed shots of
peace, tattered shards of
happiness.

then sit down and write
or stand up and
write
but write
no matter what
the other people are
doing,
no matter what
they will do to
you.

the people are the biggest
horror show on earth,
have been for
centuries.

most days go
nowhere
but the avoidance
of pain and
dissolution are
lovely.

some moments are nice, some are
nicer, some are even worth
writing
about.

We are like roses that have never bothered to bloom when we should have bloomed and it is as if the sun has become disgusted with waiting.

The shortest distance between two points is often unbearable.

Who ever heard of an infected back, anyhow? You either lived or died. The back was something the assholes had never figured out how to amputate.

They experimented on the poor and if that worked they used the treatment on the rich. And if it didn’t work, there would still be more poor people left over to experiment upon.

To think, somebody had suicided for that.

Not only did the grown-ups get mean, the kids got mean, and even the animals got mean. It was like they took their cue from the people.

The emotion was there but it wasn’t spelled out in neon.

The parents of rich kids tended to be more patriotic because they had more to lose if the country went under.

Before, they wouldn’t speak to each other. Now they were mobilized. The Tribe was in danger.

But no, there weren’t any maybes. Wealth meant victory and victory was the only reality.

You can forgive a fool because he only runs in one direction and doesn’t deceive anybody. It’s the deceivers who make you feel bad.

Why is it always only a matter of choosing between something bad and something worse?

The moonlight came in with the sounds of the city: juke boxes, automobiles, curses, dogs barking, radios … We were all in it together.

You’ll never be a writer if you hide from reality.

The park grass looked greener, the park benches looked better and the flowers were trying harder.

Everything was eternally dreary, dismal, damned. Even the weather was insolent and bitchy.

You can’t overestimate the stupidity of the general public.

They were beautiful nothings.

I carry death in my left pocket. Sometimes I take it out and talk to it: “Hello, baby, how you doing? When you coming for me? I’ll be ready.”

I never met another man I’d rather be. And even if that’s a delusion, it’s a lucky one.

Without literature, life is hell.

What foolishness makes us tweak the nose of Death continually?

YOU WHORE, I’M GETTING A BLOW JOB!

I’ve been so
down in the mouth
lately
that sometimes when I
bend over to
lace my shoes
there are
three
tongues.

I don’t think I was insane but many of the insane think that but I think now if anything saved me it was the avoidance of the crowd.

anyhow, then I went on to
city college
where the only molesting I
could see going on
was what they did to your
mind.

You have no idea, cousin, how many men can do it but won’t.

Actually, her life is boring and rather common but most are — mine is too except when lifted by whiskey.

Now they are celebrating my demise in taverns I no longer frequent.

As I continue to consume – while the madhouses, skidrows and graveyards are filled with the likes of me.

he still couldn’t write or
what he wrote didn’t
work
because that tremendous
brave optimism
that buoyed everybody up
so well
during the depression
just turned to
sugar water
during
good times.

there is hardly anything as beautiful as
a woman in a long dress
not even the sunrise
not even the geese flying south
in the long V formation
in the bright freshness
of early morning.

If you get married they think you’re finished and if you are without a woman they think you’re incomplete.

Get me in a room with more than 3 people I tend to act ill odd.

you chippy hunk of shit,
don’t bad mouth me! I’m
the toughest guy in town, you don’t know
who the hell you’re in this room
with!

I agree that complacency hardly engenders an
immortal literature
but neither does
repetition.

I went to the bathroom and masturbated — hard to kill a man like that with a Bomb?

it’s a lonely time, she sings, and you’re not
mine and it makes me feel so bad,
this thing of being me . . .

As the junkies junk as the alkies drink as the whores whore as the killers kill the albatross blinks its eyes the weather stays mostly the same.

It got so bad that Al thought
maybe it was
him
so he went to a shrink
and asked
and the shrink said,
“you’re one of the sanest men
I’ve ever met.”
poor Al.
that made him feel
worse
than ever.

I am sad for the dead and I am sad for the living but not for my 5 cats.

I realized that her life
her feelings for things
had been ruined
along the way
and that I was no more than a
temporary
companion.

We are worn-down, hope stamped out. We reach for coffee cups like the robots about to replace us.

Drink without smoke is like cock without pussy.

I walk over and fill her drink: “you got class, doll, you’re not like the others…” She likes that and I like it too because to make a thing true all you’ve got to do is believe.

Miracle I have just listened to this symphony which Mozart dashed off in one day and it had enough wild and crazy joy to last forever, whatever forever is Mozart came as close as possible to that.

Luckily, I found a few other crazed men who almost remained that way until they died.

I remember your
saying: “make it
or break it.”
neither happened and
it
won’t.

one of Lorca’s best lines is, “agony, always agony…” think of this when you kill a cockroach or pick up a razor to shave or awaken in the morning to face the sun.

I didn’t know who to
believe
but
one thing I do
know: when a man is
living
many claim relationships
that are hardly
so
and after he dies, well,
then it’s everybody’s
party.

And I sit there alone with you and Dostoevsky as the real and the artificial heart continues to falter, famished… I love you but don’t know what to do.

Yes, Wagner and the storm intermix with the wine as nights like this run up my wrists and up into my head and back down into the gut.

I see a bright
portion
under the overhead light

that shades into
darkness
and then into darker
darkness
and I can’t see beyond that.

I found the best thing
I could do
was just to type away
at my own work
and let the dying
die
as they always have.

I feel no grief for being called something
which
I am not;
in fact, it’s enthralling, somehow, like a good
back rub.

Lay down. Lay down like an animal and wait.

she slammed the door and
was gone.

I looked at the closed door
and at the doorknob
and strangely
I didn’t feel
alone.

I paid, got up, walked
to the door, opened
it.

I heard the man
say, “that guy’s
nuts.”

out on the street I
walked north
feeling
curiously
honored.

some men never
die
and some men never
live

but we’re all alive
tonight.

it doesn’t matter if Prince Charles falls off his horse
or that the hummingbird is so seldom
seen
or that we are too senseless to go
insane.

coffee. give us more of that NOTHING
coffee.

she wasn’t very
interesting
but few people
are.

I knew it would be you.

“The worst thing,” he told me, “is bitterness, people end up so bitter.”

I don’t remember going to bed, but in the morning, there I was.

I awakened depressed.

“I’m going to call the police!” Cindy said.
“Hold it,” I said, “I can explain everything!”
“It better be good,” said Cindy.
“It better,” said Celine.
I couldn’t think of anything. I just stood there.

I saw her walk in out of the corner of my eye. Why do they say “corner of the eye”? Eyes have no corners.

I sat down and found half a dead cigar in the ashtray. I lit it up, took a drag, gagged. Tried it again. Not too bad.

Sometimes I thought about my liver but my liver never spoke up, it never said, “Stop it, you’re killing me and I’m going to kill you!” If we had talking livers we wouldn’t need A.A.

My eyes were blue and nobody loved me but myself.

You only live once, right? Well, except for Lazarus. Poor sucker, he had to die twice.

Sometimes a phone made me think of an elephant turd. You know, all the shit you hear. A phone is a phone but what comes through it is another matter.

I began counting each fool that passed me. I got up to 50 in two-and-one-half-minutes, then stepped into the next bar.

I stared at the phone. Deathly damned thing. But you needed it to call 911. You never knew.

THEN MY DESK phone rang and I awakened.

Lady death was ecstatic, that’s all, ecstatic. She looked truly beautiful all over.

But Billy, how about me? What about what’s inside of me?

‘In the old days,’ he said, ‘writers lives were more interesting than their writing. Now-a-days neither their lives nor the writing is interesting.’

I gave him my code name. ‘This is Mr. Slow Death.’

My eyes were blue and my shoes were old and nobody loved me. But I had things to do.

“What kind of d*ck are you?” Celine asked.
“The best in L.A.”
“Yes? What’s L.A. stand for?”
“Lost as*holes.”

I looked around for a fly to kill.

Hell was what you made it.

A bit lazy, perhaps. But crafty.

“Our source is private.”
“So are your parts but you can expose them.”

I’m not dead yet, just in a state of rapid decay, who isn’t?

I decided to stay in bed until noon. Maybe by then half the world would be dead and it would only be half as hard to take.

My flesh looked like it wasn’t trying. It looked like it hated being part of me.

It wasn’t my day. My week. My month. My year. My life. God damn it.

the rent is a little higher here
but so far I’ve been able to
pay it
and that’s a miracle too
like still maybe being sane
while thinking of guns and sidewalks
and old ladies in libraries.

ah, christ, what a CREW:
more
poetry, always more
POETRY.

Truth changes as men change, and when truth becomes stable men will become dead, and the insect and the fire and the flood will become truth.

The sea is made of blood.

I’ll use the knives for spreading
jam, and the gas to warm
my greying love.

I’m only interested in poetry.

I will put on my shoes and shirt
and get out of here – it’ll
be better for
all of us.

Angels, we have grown apart.

Tell him to seek the stars and he will kill himself with climbing.

And love was lightning and remembrance.

I want so much that is not here and do not know where to go.

I no longer had to
prove that I was a
man,
I didn’t have to prove
anything.

the jellyfish has a purpose,
the hyena,
the tick,
the rat,
the roach
each filled with their
swollen
light.

my light is
out.
who did this to
me?

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.

I entered the world
once
more,
drove down the
hill
past the houses
full and empty
of
people,
I saw the mailman,
honked,
he waved
back
at me.

The best writers have said very little and the worst, far too much.

I am a joke told again.

your best men are
drunks and your worst men are
locking them
up,
your best men are killers and
your worst men are
selling them
bullets.

I knew exactly what I
was doing: I was
doing nothing.
because I knew there
was nothing
to do.

I can see where
creation often
stops while the
body still lives
and often
does not care
to.

the death of life
before life
dies.

I could never accept
life as it was,
I could never gobble
down all its
poisons
but there were parts,
tenuous magic parts
open for the
asking.

“Don’t you go to the movies?”
“Mostly just to eat popcorn in the dark.”

I was only photographing in words the reality of it all.

I went to the worst of bars hoping to get killed but all I could do was to get drunk again.

My beerdrunk soul is sadder than all the dead christmas trees of the world.

Sometimes you just have to pee in the sink.

Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.

Sexual intercourse is kicking death in the ass while singing.

This thing about fucking was nice. It gave people extra things to think about.

Why did the Master Race movement draw nothing but mental and physical cripples?

Eating seemed very important.

“Don’t you want to be happy, Henry?” asked my mother. “You never smile. Smile and be happy.”
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” said my father. “Be a man!”
“Smile, Henry!”

It was worse than Music Appreciation.

Trying to be good made me sick.

I felt better being alone.

I was going to get the beatings anyhow so I might as well have the fun.

“Ben,” my mother said, “you shouldn’t smoke, it will kill you.”
“I’ve had a good life.”

He had been an army officer in Germany and had come to America when he heard that the streets were paved with gold. They weren’t, so he became the head of a construction firm.

The whole earth was nothing but mouths and assholes swallowing and shitting, and fucking.

He didn’t talk much but I didn’t talk much either and we got along.

My father didn’t like people. He didn’t like me. “Children should be seen and not heard,” he told me.

The lines on the page were pulled tight, like a man screaming, but not “Joe, where are you?” More like Joe, where is anything?

Get a man who works for nothing and you get a man who just likes to hang around.

He was bursting with enthusiasms. He probably loved many things: the hawk in flight, the god-damned ocean, full moon, Balzac, bridges, stage plays, the Pulitzer Prize, the piano, the god-damned Bible.

Who was Col. Sussex? Just some guy who had to shit like the rest of us.

Curtis was just a chip off old Franky only she had much better legs. Poor Franky didn’t have any legs but he had a wonderful brain.

I drank in my words like a thirsty man. I even began to believe them.

He just stares. He’s so quiet. That’s the way we want him. Still water runs deep. Not with this one. The only thing that runs deep with him are the holes in his ears.

I could make it. I could win drinking contests, I could gamble. Maybe I could pull a few holdups. I didn’t ask much, just to be left alone.

“I think I’m going to die,” the old man said. “I don’t want to die. I’m afraid to die …”
“You’ve lived long enough, you old fart!” muttered my father.

I had also read somewhere that if a man didn’t truly believe or understand what he was espousing, somehow he could do a more convincing job, which gave me a considerable advantage over the teachers.

I could stay with Mears-Starbuck for forty-seven years, I thought. I could live with a crazy girlfriend, get my left ear sliced off and maybe inherit Ferris’ job when he retired.

The trouble is that there are too many Chinks. When you kill a Chink he splits in half and becomes two Chinks.

“Henry Chinaski”, the principal said over the microphone. And I walked forward. There was no applause. The one kindly soul in the audience gave two or three clasps.

It felt good to sit alone in a small space and smoke and drink. I had always been good company for myself.

“What’s the easiest fucking thing to take?” I asked him.
“Journalism. Those journalism majors don’t do anything.”
“O.K., I’ll be a journalist.”

Sunday, the worst god-damned day of them all.

My father didn’t drive because he wanted to save gas. He needed the gas to drive to and from his invisible job.

I was like a turd that drew flies instead of like a flower that butterflies and bees desired. I wanted to live alone, I felt best being alone, cleaner.

The first thing I remember my grandmother saying was, “I will bury all of you!”

I’d rather stick my head up an elephant’s cunt.

He stood there as I walked on. Never trust a man with a perfectly-trimmed mustache …

I didn’t know if I was unhappy. I felt too miserable to be unhappy.

I avoided any direct reference to Jews and Blacks, who had never given me any trouble. All my trouble had come from white gentiles.

‘Daddy,’ my mother asked, ‘aren’t we going to run out of gas?’
‘No there’s plenty of god-damned gas.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘I’m going to get some god-damed oranges!’

Maybe I’d be a bank robber. Some god-damned thing. Something with flare, fire. You only had one shot. Why be a window washer?

I was still tough but it wasn’t the same. I had to withdraw. I watched people from afar, it was like a stage play. Only they were on stage and I was an audience of one.

A worthwhile day, I had killed two spiders, I had upset the balance of nature – now we would all be eaten up by the bugs and the flies.

“What’s so nice about laying in bed all day?”
“I don’t have to see anybody.”
“You like that?”
“Oh, yes.”

Something had happened. The bath towels knew it, the bathtub and the toilet knew it. My father turned and walked out the door. He knew it. It was my last beating. From him.

But I didn’t want to be anything anyhow. And I was certainly succeeding.

“What do you do all day?”
“I just stay in bed.”
“That’s awful.”
“No, it’s nice. I like it.”

I had decided against religion a couple of years back. If it were true, it made fools out of people, or it drew fools. And if it weren’t true, the fools were all the more foolish.

I didn’t say any more because when you hate, you don’t beg…

They are unhappy with what I have become.

‘Your parents don’t give you much love, do they?’
‘I don’t need that stuff,’ I told her.
‘Henry, everybody needs love.’
‘I don’t need anything.’
‘You poor boy.’

“When I get down to my last dime I’ll just walk over to skid row.”
“There are some real weirdos down there.”
“They’re everywhere.”

If you can hit a guy once, you can hit him twice.

Was I the only person who was distracted by this future without a chance?

I had no Freedom. I had nothing.

First paycheck I get, I thought, I’m going to get myself a room near the downtown L.A. Public Library.

Instead I learned that the poor usually stay poor. That the young rich smell the stink of the poor and learn to find it a bit amusing. They had to laugh, otherwise it would be too terrifying.

Dying in a a war never stopped wars from happening.

Since some people had told me that I was ugly, I always preferred shade to the sun, darkness to light.

just heard a commercial
which told me
Farmer John smokes his own
bacon.
now, there’s one tough
son of a
bitch.

I was an Agnostic. Agnostics didn’t have much to argue about.

Never bring a lot of money to where a poor man lives. He can only lose what little he has. On the other hand it is mathematically possible that he might win whatever you bring with you. What you must do, with money and the poor, is never let them get too close to one another.

You could sit in there all day drinking coffee and they never asked you to leave no matter how bad you looked. They just asked the bums not to bring their wine and drink it there. Places like that gave you hope when there wasn’t much hope.

“Jim, did your father really blow his brains out because of your mother?”
“Yeah. He was on the telephone. He told her he had a gun. He said, ‘If you don’t come back to me I’m going to kill myself. Will you come back to me?’ And my mother said, ‘No.’ There was a shot and that was that.”
“What did your mother do?”
“She hung up.”
“All right, I’ll see you tonight buddy.”

There are no good wars or bad wars. The only thing bad about a war is to lose it. All wars have been fought for a so-called good Cause on both sides. But only the victor’s Cause becomes history’s Noble Cause. It’s not a matter of who is right or who is wrong, it’s a matter of who has the best generals and the better army!

The Baron went on doing magic things. Half the notebook was filled with Baron Von Himmlen. It made me feel good to write about the Baron. A man needed somebody. There wasn’t anybody around, so you had to make up somebody, make him up to be like a man should be. It wasn’t make-believe or cheating. The other way was make-believe and cheating living your life without a man like him around.

He even got up once in English class and read an essay called ‘The Value of Friendship’ and while he was reading it he kept glancing at me. It was a stupid essay, soft and standard, but the class applauded when he finished, and I thought, well, that’s what people think and what can you do about it? I wrote a counter-essay called, ‘The Value of No Friendship At All.’ The teacher didn’t let me read it to the class. She gave me a D.

People always talked about the good clean smell of fresh sweat. They had to make excuses for it. They never talked about the good clean smell of fresh shit. There was nothing really as glorious as a good beer shit – I mean after drinking twenty or twenty-five beers the night before. The odor of a beer shit like that spread all around and stayed for a good hour-and-a-half. It made you realize that you were really alive.

Gathered around me were the weak instead of the strong, the ugly instead of the beautiful, the losers instead of the winners. It looked like it was my destiny to travel in their company through life. That didn’t bother me so much as the fact that I seemed irresistible to these dull idiot fellows.

“This is very creative,” said Mrs. Fretag, and she began to read my essay. The words sounded good to me. Everybody was listening. My words filled the room, from blackboard to blackboard, they hit the ceiling and bounced off, they covered Mrs. Fretag’s shoes and piled up on the floor.

I tried some more. It was tasting better. I was feeling better. “This stuff belongs to your father, Baldy. I shouldn’t drink it all.”
“He doesn’t care. He’s stopped drinking.” Never had I felt so good. It was better than masturbating. I went from barrel to barrel. It was magic. Why hadn’t someone told me? With this, life was great, a man was perfect, nothing could touch him. I stood up straight and looked at Baldy. “Where’s your mother? I’m going to fuck your mother!”

Stanley was right. I never hit another home run. I struck out most of the time. But they always remembered that home run and while they still hated me, it was a better kind of hatred, like they weren’t quite sure why.

Jimmy waited and Clare walked over. She put her face close to mine. She spoke softly so Jimmy wouldn’t hear. “Listen, Honey, any time you really want to graduate, I can arrange to give you your diploma.”
“Thanks, Clare, I might be seeing you.”
“I’ll rip your balls off, Henry!”
“I don’t doubt it, Clare.” She went back to Jimmy and they walked away down the street.

Then I began writing. It was about a German aviator in World War I. Baron Von Himmlen. He flew a red Fokker. And he was not popular with his fellow fliers. He didn’t talk to them. He drank alone and he flew alone. He didn’t bother with women, although they all loved him. He was above that. He was too busy. He was busy shooting Allied plans out of the sky. Already he had shot down 110 and he war wasn’t over. His red Fokker, which he referred to as the “October Bird of Death,” was known everywhere. Even the enemy ground troops knew him as he often flew low over them, taking their gunfire and laughing, dropping bottles of champagne to them suspended from little parachutes. Baron Von Himmlen was never attacked by less than five Allied planes at a time. He was an ugly man with scars on his face, but he was beautiful if you looked long enough — it was in the eyes, his style, his courage, his fierce aloneness.

There wasn’t even resignation on my part, only disgust, a disgust that this had happened to me, and a disgust with the doctors who couldn’t do anything about it. They were helpless and I was helpless, the only difference being that I was the victim.

I reached into my pocket and too the medal and tossed it toward the black opening. It went right in. It disappeared into the darkness.
Then I stepped onto the sidewalk and walked back home. When I got there my parents where doing various cleaning chores. It was a Saturday. Now I had to mow and clip the lawn, water it and the flowers. I changed into my working clothes, went out, and with my father watching me from beneath his dark and evil eyebrows, I opened the garage doors and carefully pulled the mower out backwards, the mower blades not turning then, but waiting.

I walked around the library looking for books. I pulled them off the shelves, one by one. But they were all tricks. They were very dull. There were pages and pages of words that didn’t say anything. Or if they did say something they took too long to say it and by the time they said it you already were too tired to have it matter at all.

“Who in the Hell is Tom Jones?”

I was shacked with a 24 year old girl from New York City for two weeks – about the time of the garbage strike out there, and one night my 34 year old woman arrived and she said, “I want to see my rival.” She did and then she said, “o, you’re a cute little thing!” Next I knew there was a screech of wildcats – such screaming and scratching, wounded animal moans,
blood and piss. . . I was drunk and in my shorts. I tried to seperate them and fell, wrenched my knee. Then they were through the screen door and down the walk and out into the street. Squadcars full of cops arrived. A police helicopter circled overhead. I stood in the bathroom and grinned in the mirror. It’s not often at the age of 55 that such splendid things occur. Better than the Watts riots. The 34 year old came back in. She had pissed all over herself and her clothing was torn and she was followed by 2 cops who wanted to know why. Pulling up my shorts I tried to explain.

My mother was reading the note. Soon I heard her crying. Then she was wailing. “Oh, my god! You’ve disgraced your father and myself! It’s a disgrace! Suppose the neighbors find out? What will the neighbors think?” They never spoke to their neighbors.

The first day we rode our bikes to Chelsey and parked them. It was a terrible feeling. Most of those kids, at least all the older ones, had their own automobiles, many of them new convertibles, and they weren’t black or dark blue like most cars, they were bright yellow, green, orange, and red. The guys sat in them outside of the school and the girls gathered around and went for rides. Everybody was nicely dressed, the guys and the girls, they had pullover sweaters, wrist watches and the latest in shoes. They seemed very adult and poised and superior. And there I was in my homemade shirt, my one ragged pair of pants, my rundown shoes, and I was covered with boils. The guys with the cars didn’t worry about acne. They were very handsome, they were tall and clean with bright teeth and they didn’t wash their hair with hand soap. They seemed to know something I didn’t know. I was at the bottom again.

Since all the guys had cars Baldy and I were ashamed of our bicycles. We left them home and walked to school and back, two-and-one-half miles each way. We carried brown bag lunches. But mot of the other students didn’t even eat in the school cafeteria. They drove to malt shops with the girls, played the juke boxes and laughed. They were on their way to U.S.C.

Nobody knew how good I was, nobody knew what I could do. I was some kind of miracle. The sun tossed yellow everywhere and I cut through it, a crazy knife on wheels. My father was a beggar in the streets of India but all the women in the world loved me…

The war. Here I was a virgin. Could you imagine getting your ass blown off for the sake of history before you even knew what a woman was? Or owned an automobile? What would I be protecting? Somebody else. Somebody else who didn’t give a shit about me. Dying in a war never stopped wars from happening.

I wasn’t interested in world history, only my own. What crap. Your parents controlled your growing-up period, they pissed all over you. Then when you got ready to go out on your own, the others wanted to stick you into a uniform so you could get your ass shot off.

We are
Born like this
Into this
Into these carefully mad wars
Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
Into bars where people no longer speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings
Born into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty
Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes.

Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you’re allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It’s like killing yourself, and then you’re reborn. I guess I’ve lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now.

The Laughing Heart

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

sleeping in the rain helps me forget things like I am going to
die and you are going to die and the cats are going to die
but it’s still good to stretch out and know you have arms
and
feet and a head, hands, all the parts, even eyes to close
once
more, it really helps to know these things, to know your
advantages
and your limitations, but why do the cats have to die, I
think that the
world should be full of cats and full of rain, that’s all, just
cats and
rain, rain and cats, very nice, good
night.

I went into the men’s room and stared in the mirror at my face in disgust. I looked like I knew something, but it was a lie, I was a fake and there’s nothing worse in the world than when a man suddenly realizes and admits to himself that he’s a phoney, after spending all his time up to then trying to convince himself that he wasn’t. I stared at all the sinks and pipes and bowls and I felt like them, worse than them: I’d rather be them.

shot in the eye
shot in the brain
shot in the ass
shot like a flower in the dance

amazing how death wins hands down
amazing how much credence is given to idiot forms of
life

amazing how laughter has been drowned out
amazing how viciousness is such a constant

I must soon declare my own war on their war
I must hold to my last piece of ground
I must protect the small space I have made that has
allowed me life

my life not their death
my death not their death

this place, this time, now
I vow to the sun
that I will laugh the good laugh once again
in the perfect place of me
forever.

their death not my life.

The sheep in centuries past audiences at symphony concerts were not afraid to act out their displeasure at works which offended them. In our time I have either attended or listened to hundreds of concerts and never have I heard an audience express even the mildest displeasure with any work. Have our musical artists improved to such an extent? Or is it the decay of courage, the inability of the mass mind to reach its own decisions? Not only in the world of music but in the other world? The next time you hear a symphony concert note the obedient applause, the death of the bluebird, the shading of the sun; the hooves of the horses from hell pounding on the barren ground of the human spirit.

Defining the magic a good poem is like a cold beer when you need it, a good poem is a hot turkey sandwich when you’re hungry, a good poem is a gun when the mob corners you, a good poem is something that allows you to walk through the streets of death, a good poem can make death melt like hot butter, a good poem can frame agony and hang it on a wall, a good poem can let your feet touch China, a good poem can make a broken mind fly, a good poem can let you shake hands with Mozart, a good poem can let you shoot craps with the devil and win, a good poem can do almost anything, and most important a good poem knows when to stop.

bulls strut in pinwheel glory,
rockets stun the sky,
but I don’t know
quite what to make
of the dead flowers
of myself,
whether to dump them
out of the bowl
or
press them between
these blank pages
and go on;
well, all grief comes down
to hard death
and weeping finally ends.
thank the god
who made
it.

And I laugh, I can still laugh, who can’t laugh when the whole thing
is so ridiculous that only the insane, the clowns, the half-wits, the cheaters, the whores, the horseplayers, the bankrobbers, the poets … are interesting?

I am with the roots
of flowers
entwined, entombed
sending up my passionate blossoms
as a flight of rockets
and argument;
wine churls my throat,
above me
feet walk upon my brain, monkies fall from the sky
clutching photographs
of the planets,
but I seek only music
and the leisure
of my pain.

Layover

Making love in the sun, in the morning sun
in a hotel room
above the alley
where poor men poke for bottles;
making love in the sun
making love by a carpet redder than our blood,
making love while the boys sell headlines
and Cadillacs,
making love by a photograph of Paris
and an open pack of Chesterfields,
making love while other men – poor folks –
work.
That moment – to this. . .
may be years in the way they measure,
but it’s only one sentence back in my mind –
there are so many days
when living stops and pulls up and sits
and waits like a train on the rails.
I pass the hotel at 8
and at 5; there are cats in the alleys
and bottles and bums,
and I look up at the window and think,
I no longer know where you are,
and I walk on and wonder where
the living goes
when it stops.

in the cupboard sits my bottle
like a dwarf waiting to scratch out my prayers.
I drink and cough like some idiot at a symphony,
sunlight and maddened birds are everywhere,
the phone rings gamboling its sound
against the odds of the crooked sea;
I drink deeply and evenly now,
I drink to paradise
and death
and the lie of love.

The dead do not need
aspirin or
sorrow,
I suppose.
but they might need
rain.
not shoes
but a place to
walk.
not cigarettes,
they tell us,
but a place to
burn.
or we’re told:
space and a place to
fly
might be the
same.
the dead don’t need
me.
nor do the
living.
but the dead might need
each
other.
in fact, the dead might need
everything we
need
and
we need so much
if we only knew
what it
was.
it is
probably
everything
and we will all
probably die
trying to get
it
or die
because we
don’t get
it.
I hope
you will understand
when I am dead
I got
as much
as
possible.

The Genius Of The Crowd
there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day

and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace

those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not have peace
those who preach peace do not have love

beware the preachers
beware the knowers
beware those who are always reading books
beware those who either detest poverty
or are proud of it
beware those quick to praise
for they need praise in return
beware those who are quick to censor
they are afraid of what they do not know
beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
beware the average man the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks average

but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you
to kill anybody
not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy anything
that differs from their own
not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world
not being able to love fully
they will believe your love incomplete
and then they will hate you
and their hatred will be perfect

like a shining diamond
like a knife
like a mountain
like a tiger
like hemlock

their finest art.

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 everyday and
on the last day?

Coming in from the factory or warehouse, tired enough, there seemed little use for the night except to eat, sleep and then return to the menial job. But there was the typewriter waiting for me in those many old rooms with torn shades and worn rugs, the tub and toilet down the hall, and the feeling in the air of all the losers who had proceeded me. Sometimes the typewriter was there when the job wasn’t and the food wasn’t and the rent wasn’t. Sometimes the typer was in hock. Sometimes there was only the park bench. But at the best of times there was the small room and the machine and the bottle. The sound of the keys, on and on, and shouts: ‘HEY! KNOCK THAT OFF, FOR CHRIST’S SAKE! WE’RE WORKING PEOPLE HERE AND WE’VE GOT TO GET UP IN THE MORNING!’ With broom sticks knocking on the floor, pounding coming from the ceiling, I would work in a last few lines…

We waited and waited. All of us. Didn’t the shrink know that waiting was one of the things that drove people crazy? People waited all their lives. They waited to live, they waited to die. They waited in line to buy toilet paper. They waited in line for money. And if they didn’t have any money they waited in longer lines. You waited to go to sleep and then you waited to awaken. You waited to get married and you waited to get divorced. You waited for it to rain, you waited for it to stop. You waited to eat and then you waited to eat again. You waited in a shrink’s office with a bunch of psychos and you wondered if you were one.

Often the best parts of life were when you weren’t doing anything at all, just mulling it over, chewing on it. I mean, say that you figure that everything is senseless, then it can’t be quite senseless because you are aware that it’s senseless and your awareness of senselessness almost gives it sense. You know what I mean? And optimistic pessimism.

I was getting depressed. My life wasn’t going anywhere. I needed something, the flashing of lights, glamour, some damn thing. And here I was, talking to the dead. I finished my first drink. The second was ready.

I was feeling unfulfilled and, frankly, rather crappy about everything. I wasn’t going anywhere and neither was the rest of the world. We were all just hanging around waiting to die and meanwhile doing little things to fill the space. Some of us weren’t even doing little things.

The game had worn me down. I’d lost my kick. Existence was not only absurd, it was plain hard work. Think of how many times you put on your underwear in a lifetime. It was appalling, it was disgusting, it was stupid.

I needed a vacation. I needed 5 women. I needed to get the wax out of my ears. My car needed an oil change. I’d failed to file my damned income tax. One of the stems had broken off of my reading glasses. There were ants in my apartment. I needed to get my teeth cleaned. My shoes were run down at the heels. I had insomnia. My auto insurance had expired. I cut myself every time I shaved. I hadn’t laughed in 6 years. I tended to worry when there was nothing to worry about. And when there was something to worry about, I got drunk.

Here came the waitress. She had on a mini-skirt, high heels, see-through blouse with padded brassiere. Everything was too small for her: her outfit, the world, her mind. Her face was hard as steel. When she smiled it hurt. It hurt her and it hurt me. She kept smiling. That smile was so false the hairs on my arms rose. I looked away.

I wasn’t sleeping on the streets at night. Of course, there were a lot of good people sleeping in the streets. They weren’t fools, they just didn’t fit into the needed machinery of the moment. And those needs kept altering. It was a grim set-up and if you found yourself sleeping in your own bed at night, that alone was a precious victory over the forces.

I killed four flies while waiting. Damn, death was everywhere. Man, bird, beast, reptile, rodent, insect, fish didn’t have a chance. The fix was in. I didn’t know what to do about it. I got depressed. You know, I see a boy at the supermarket, he’s packing my groceries, then I see him sticking himself into his own grave along with the toilet paper, the beer and the chicken breasts.

Hell, I’d even failed with women. Three wives. Nothing really wrong each time. It all got destroyed by petty bickering. Railing about nothing. Getting pissed-off over anything and everything. Day by day, year by year, grinding. Instead of helping each other you just sliced away, picked at this or that. Goading. Endless goading. It became a cheap contest. And once you got into it, it became habitual. You couldn’t seem to get out. You almost didn’t want to get out. And then you did get out. All the way.

Teeth. What god-damned things they were. We had to eat. And eat and eat again. We were all disgusting, doomed to our dirty little tasks. Eating and farting and scratching and smiling and celebrating holidays.

The earth. Smog, murder, the poisoned air, the poisoned water, the poisoned food, the hatred, the hopelessness, everything. The only beautiful thing about the earth is the animals and now they are being killed off, soon they will be gone except for pet rats and race horses. It’s so sad, no wonder you drink so much.

“Look, barkeeper, I’m a peaceful man. Fairly normal. I don’t sniff armpits or wear ladies’ underwear. But everywhere I go, somebody is pushing shots at me, they give me no rest. Why is this?”
“I think you got it comin’ somehow.”
“Well, Eddie, you stop thinking and see if you can fix me a double vodka and tonic, touch of lime.”
“We don’t got no lime.”
“Yeah, you have. I can see it from here.”
“That lime’s not for you.”
“Yeah? Who’s it for? Elizabeth Taylor? Now, if you want to sleep in your own bed tonight, I’ll have that lime. In my drink. Pronto.”

It was the next day. I had cancelled my appointment to speak before the Palm Springs Chamber of Commerce. It was raining. The ceiling leaked. The rain dripped down through the ceiling and went “spat, spat, spat, a spat a spat, spat, spat, spat, a spat, spat, spat, a spat, a spat, a spat, spat, spat, spat…” The sake kept me warm. But a warm what? A warm zero. Here I was 55 years old and I didn’t have a pot to catch rain in. My father had warned me that I would end up diddling myself on some stranger’s back porch in Arkansas. And I still had time to make it.

Would Celine do that? Who would want to live to be 102? Nobody but a fool. Why would Celine wish to linger? The whole thing was crazy. Lady Death was crazy. I was crazy. The pilots of airliners were crazy. Never look at the pilot. Just get on board and order drinks.

Then he spoke. “I just want to find out. I just want to find out for myself.”
“I don’t come cheap.”
“How much?”
“6 bucks an hour.”
“That doesn’t seem like much money.”
“Does to me. You got a photo of your wife?”

but as the food went down with the
sayings
the appetite and digestion went along with them.

it seemed to me that I had never met
another person on earth
as discouraging to my happiness
as my father.

and it appeared that I had the same effect upon him.

when we were kids
laying around the lawn
on our
bellies

we often talked
about
how
we’d like to
die

and
we all
agreed on the
same
thing;

we’d all
like to die
fucking

(although
none of us
had
done any
fucking)

and now
that
we are hardly
kids
any longer

we think more
about
how
not to
die

and
although
we’re
ready

most of
us
would
prefer to
do it
alone

under the
sheets

now
that

most of
us

have fucked
our lives
away.

Beasts bounding through time.

Van Gogh writing his brother for paints
Hemingway testing his shotgun
Celine going broke as a doctor of medicine
the impossibility of being human
Villon expelled from Paris for being a thief
Faulkner drunk in the gutters of his town
the impossibility of being human
Burroughs killing his wife with a gun
Mailer stabbing his
the impossibility of being human
Maupassant going mad in a rowboat
Dostoevsky lined up against a wall to be shot
Crane off the back of a boat into the propeller
the impossibility
Sylvia with her head in the oven like a baked potato
Harry Crosby leaping into that Black Sun
Lorca murdered in the road by the Spanish troops
the impossibility
Artaud sitting on a madhouse bench
Chatterton drinking rat poison
Shakespeare a plagiarist
Beethoven with a horn stuck into his head against deafness
the impossibility the impossibility
Nietzsche gone totally mad
the impossibility of being human
all too human
this breathing
in and out
out and in
these punks
these cowards
these champions
these mad dogs of glory

moving this little bit of light toward
us
impossibly.

there’s nothing to
discuss
there’s nothing to
remember
there’s nothing to
forget

it’s sad
and
it’s not
sad

seems the
most sensible
thing
a person can
do
is
sit
with drink in
hand
as the walls
wave
their goodbye
smiles

one comes through
it
all
with a certain
amount of
efficiency and
bravery
then
leaves

some accept
the possibility of
God
to help them
get
through

others
take it
straight on

and to these

I drink
tonight.

girls
please give your
bodies and your
lives
to
the young men
who
deserve them

besides
there is
no way
I would welcome
the
intolerable
dull
senseless hell
you would bring
me

and
I wish you
luck
in bed
and
out

but not
in
mine

thank
you.

My vanishing act

when I got sick of the bar
and I sometimes did
I had a place to go:
it was a tall field of grass
an abandoned
graveyard.
I didn’t consider this to be a
morbid pastime.
it just seemed to be the best
place to be.
it offered a generous cure to
the vicious hangover.
through the grass I could see
the stones,
many were tilted
at strange angles
against gravity
as though they must
fall
but I never saw one
fall
although there were many of those
in the yard.
it was cool and dark
with a breeze
and I often slept
there.
I was never
bothered.
each time I returned to the bar
after an absence
it was always the same with
them:
“where the hell you
been? we thought you
died!”
I was their bar freak, they needed me
to make themselves feel
better.
just like, at times, I needed that
graveyard.

darkness falls upon Humanity
and faces become terrible
things
that wanted more than there
was.

all our days are marked with
unexpected
affronts – some
disastrous, others
less so
but the process is
wearing and
continuous.
attrition rules.
most give
way
leaving
empty spaces
where people should
be.

and now
as we ready to self-destruct
there is very little left to
kill

which makes the tragedy
less and more
much much
more.

the area dividing the brain and the soul
is affected in many ways by
experience –
some lose all mind and become soul:
insane.
some lose all soul and become mind:
intellectual.
some lose both and become:
accepted.

sometimes when everything seems at
its worst
when all conspires
and gnaws
and the hours, days, weeks
years
seem wasted –
stretched there upon my bed
in the dark
looking upward at the ceiling
I get what many will consider an
obnoxious thought:
it’s still nice to be
Bukowski.

the people
come into the
bar
night after night
for the same old
show
which he will one day
end
alone
blowing his brains to
the walls.

the price of creation
is never
too high.

the price of living
with other people
always
is.

they’re not going to let you
feel good
for very long
anywhere.
the forces aren’t going to
let you sit around
fucking-off and
relaxing.
you’ve got to do it
their way.

the unhappy, the bitter and
the vengeful
need their
fix – which is
you or somebody
anybody
in agony, or
better yet
dead, dropped into some
hole.

as long as there are
human beings about
there is never going to be
any peace
for any individual
upon this earth (or
anywhere else
they might
escape to).

all you can do
is maybe grab
ten lucky minutes
here
or maybe an hour
there.

something
is working toward you
right now, and
I mean you
and nobody but
you.

it is so dark now with the sadness of
people
they were tricked, they were taught to expect the
ultimate when nothing is
promised
now young girls weep alone in small rooms
old men angrily swing their canes at
visions as
ladies comb their hair as
ants search for survival
history surrounds us
and our lives
slink away
in
shame.

Now look, she said, stretched out on the bed, I don’t want anything personal, let’s just do it, I don’t want to get involved, got it? She kicked off her high-heeled shoes… Sure, he said, standing there, let’s just pretend that we’ve already done it, there’s nothing less involved than that, is there? What the hell do you mean? She asked. I mean, he said, I’d rather drink anyhow. And he poured himself one. It was a lousy night in Vegas and he walked to the window and looked out at the dumb lights. You a fag? She asked, you a god damned fag? No, he said. You don’t have to get shitty…

after you’ve pulled off the tablecloth with
the full plates of food
and broken the windows
and rung the bells of
idiots
and have
spoken true and terrible
words
and have
chased the mob through the
doorway –
then comes the great and
peaceful moment: sitting alone
and
pouring that quiet drink.

the world is better without
them.

only the plants and the animals are
true comrades.

I drink to them and with
them.

they wait as I fill their
glasses.

I can hear cars on the freeway, it’s like a distant sea
sludged with people
while over my other shoulder, far over on 7th street
near Western
is the hospital, that house of agony —
sheets and bedpans and arms and heads and
expirations;
everything is so sweetly awful, so continuously and
sweetly awful: the art of consummation: life eating
life…

there is always that space there
just before they get to us
that space
that fine relaxer
the breather
while say
flopping on a bed
thinking of nothing
or say
pouring a glass of water from the
spigot
while entranced by
nothing

that
gentle pure
space

it’s worth

centuries of
existence

say

just to scratch your neck
while looking out the window at
a bare branch

that space
there
before they get to us
ensures
that
when they do
they won’t
get it all

ever.

we are burning like a chicken wing left on the grill of an outdoor barbecue
we are unwanted and burning we are burning and unwanted
we are
an unwanted
burning
as we sizzle and fry
to the bone
the coals of Dante’s ‘Inferno’ spit and sputter beneath
us
and
above the sky is an open hand
and
the words of wise men are useless
it’s not a nice world, a nice world it’s
not …

Drive through hell the people are weary, unhappy and frustrated, the people are bitter and vengeful, the people are deluded and fearful, the people are angry and uninventive and I drive among them on the freeway and they project what is left of themselves in their manner of driving — some more hateful, more thwarted than others — some don’t like to be passed, some attempt to keep others from passing — some attempt to block lane changes — some hate cars of a newer, more expensive model — others in these cars hate the older cars. The freeway is a circus of cheap and petty emotions, it’s humanity on the move, most of them coming from some place they hated and going to another they hate just as much or more. The freeways are a lesson in what we have become and most of the crashes and deaths are the collision of incomplete beings, of pitiful and demented lives. When I drive the freeways I see the soul of humanity of my city and it’s ugly, ugly, ugly: the living have choked the heart away.

I can remember starving in a
small room in a strange city
shades pulled down, listening to
classical music
I was young I was so young it hurt like a knife
inside
because there was no alternative except to hide as
long as possible –
not in self-pity but with dismay at my limited chance:
trying to connect.

the old composers – Mozart, Bach, Beethoven,
Brahms were the only ones who spoke to me
and they were dead.

finally, starved and beaten, I had to go into
the streets to be interviewd for low-paying and
monotonous
jobs
by strange men behind desks
men without eyes men without faces
who would take my hours
break them
piss on them.

now I work for the editors the readers the critics

but still hang around and drink with
Mozart, Bach, Brahms and the
Bee
some buddies
some men
sometimes all we need to be able to continue alone
are the dead
rattling the walls
that close us in.

sitting here watching the second hand on the TIMEX go
around and
around…
this will hardly be a night to remember
sitting here searching for blackheads on the back of my neck
as other men enter the sheets with dolls of flame
I look into myself and find perfect emptiness.
I am out of cigarettes and don’t even have a gun to point.
this writer’s block is my only possession.
the second hand on the TIMEX still goes around and around…
I always wanted to be a writer
now I’m one who can’t.

might as well go downstairs and watch late night tv with the wife
she’ll ask me how it went
I’ll wave a hand nonchalantly
settle down next to her
and watch the glass people fail
as I have failed.

I’m going to walk down the stairway now

what a sight:

an empty man being careful not to trip and bang his empty head.

there wasn’t a stove
and we put cans of beans
in hot water in the sink
to heat them
up
and we read the Sunday papers
on Monday
after digging them out of the
trash cans
but somehow we managed
money for wine
and the
rent
and the money came off
the streets
out of hock shops
out of nowhere
and all that mattered
was the next
bottle
and we drank and sang
and
fought
were in and out
of drunk
tanks
car crashes
hospitals
we barricaded ourselves
against the
police
and the other roomers
hated
us
and the desk clerk
of the hotel
feared
us
and it went on
and
on
and it was one of the
most wonderful times
of my
life.

Our progenitors, our educational systems, the land, the media, the way have deluded and misled the masses: they have been defeated by the aridity of the actual dream. They were unaware that achievement or victory or luck or whatever the hell you want to call it must have its defeats.

most of these
American poets
pushing and hustling their
talents
playing at
greatness.