forgotten.
nobody talks of books,
of paintings,
of the stock market or
the life of the
inch worm.
each person quietly
mocks the other person,
in a wholesome, good-
natured way
(of course).
some heads fall,
others
laugh.
it is an evening of
friends and
relatives.
the hours inch-worm
along.
they and we are in the
trenches
of hell,
throwing mud at the
fates.
then they grow weary of
the absurd battle and
leave
one by
one.
then there is just the
wife and
myself.
soon she goes up the
stairway
and I am left with
myself,
right back where I
began.
I sit there
lighting
cigars.
there are still things
to be
resolved
but what are
they?
I turn out the lights
and sit in the
dark.
then I see a strange headless
thing walk up to the
glass door.
it places its paws
high
upon the
door and
leans there.
its eyes are in its
belly.
one is gold and
glowing.
the other is green
with shots of
red.
I walk up the stairway,
climb into
bed.
my wife snores
peacefully.
the night is finished.
I am still alive.
the bluebird swallows
the worm.
the harbor tangles with
the fog.
morning swarms the
window.
I am a joke told
again.
I sleep.
a great show
when I went to visit my friend
at the Motion Picture Hospital,
it was full of actors and
freaks and directors and
assistant directors and grips
and cameramen and film editors
and script writers and sound
men and etc.
some of them were sick
some of them were dying
but somehow it wasn’t like a
regular hospital,
that special heavy darkness
wasn’t there,
everything was:
“LIGHTS! CAMERA! ACTION!”
everybody still
on the
set.
at least, it seemed like that
to me.
as bad as most Hollywood
movies had been, were and
still are,
there remained the touch of
the brave and dramatic in
the air.
when I went to the cafeteria,
everything was on cue:
even the people in wheelchairs made
dramatic gestures, spoke in
senatorial tones; they had
fierce blue eyes,
white, carefully cropped
beards,
deliberate enunciations,
there was blithe bullshit,
a whole Shakespearean
afterglow.
dwarfs sitting at tables
eating blueberry
pie.
old script writers, all
looking Faulknerian
musing about their drunken
afternoons at Musso and
Frank’s.
old dolls, once beautiful
now toothlessly munching
soft toast, poking at
peaches.
and almost all the rooms
were private,
arranged to bring in the
light of hope.
the nurses, as in all
hospitals
worked their asses
off,
and the doctors were
congenial,
good actors in a bad
scene.
and my friend, who was
dying, spoke to me
not of his death
but of his idea for
his next
novel.
he also spoke of the
crazies and geniuses
or would-be
geniuses
running
loose.
“we’ve got one of the
original Tarzans here,”
he told me.
“every now and then he
runs all over the
place
giving his Tarzan
yodel and looking for
his Jane.”
“they let him run
loose?”
“oh, yes, he doesn’t
harm anybody.
we rather like it.”
well, my friend
died, so I didn’t go
there anymore.
but it was a very odd
visitation.
death was there but
death was on camera
as He was so often in
Hollywood.
it was as if
everybody was ready for
the last scene,
having practiced it so
often
already.
and about a month
later
I read a small bit in
the paper:
Tarzan had
died,
perhaps he has gone
on to find his
Jane.
there are still happy
endings, aren’t
there?
like my friend who
died
his books have become
famous throughout much
of the
world.
which is only half a
happy ending
but at least his widow
in Malibu
won’t have to baby
sit
to have bacon with
her
eggs.
epilogue
Fante gone to Hollywood,
Fante on the golf course,
Fante at the gambling tables,
Fante in a home in Malibu,
Fante a friend of William
Saroyan.
But Fante, I remember you
best,
in the 1930s
living in that hotel next to
Angel’s Flight,
struggling to be a writer,
sending stories and letters
to Mencken.
the scream came from
the gut
then.
I heard it.
I still hear it.
and I refuse to imagine you
on a golf course
or in Hollywood.
but now it doesn’t matter.
you’re dead
but the good writing
remains
and the way you helped
me get the line down
the way I
wanted it.
I’m glad I finally met you
even though you were
dying
and remember when I
asked you,
“listen, John, whatever
happened to that
Mexican girl in
Ask the Dust
?”
and you answered,
“she turned out to be
a goddamned
lesbian!”
and then the nurse
came in with your
big white
pill.
Fante
every now and then it comes back to
me,
him in bed there, blind,
being slowly chopped away,
the little bulldog.
the nurses passing through, pulling
at curtains, blinds, sheets.
seeing if he was still alive.
the Colorado Kid.
the scourge of the American
Mercury.
Mencken’s Catholic bad boy.
gone Hollywood.
and tossed up on shore.
being chopped away.
chop, chop, chop.
until he was gone.
he never knew he would be
famous.
I wonder if he would have given
a damn.
I think he would have.
John, you’re big time now.
you’ve entered the Books of
Forever
right there with Dostoevsky,
Tolstoy, and your boy
Sherwood Anderson.
I told you.
and you said, “you wouldn’t
shit an old blind man,
would you?”
ah, no need for that,
bulldog.
it got away
lost another poem
in this computer,
it’s like reeling in
a fish
and then it
escapes the hook
just as you reach
for it.
only this poem
wasn’t a very big
fish.
the world won’t
miss it.
it has swum
away to the
Netherlands.
and I’m baiting
my hook
again.
waiting for
the big
one.
the luck of the draw
after decades and decades of poverty
as I now approach the lip of the
grave,
suddenly I have a home, a new car, a
spa, a swimming pool, a computer.
will this destroy me?
well, something is bound to destroy
me soon enough.
the boys in the jails, the slaughterhouses,
the factories, on the park benches, in the
post offices, the bars
would never believe me
now.
I have a problem believing myself.
I am no different now
than I was in the tiny rooms of
starvation and madness.
the only difference
is that I am
older.
and I drink better
wine.
all the rest is
nonsense,
the luck of the
draw.
a life can change in a tenth of
a second.
or sometimes it can take
70
years.
let it enfold you
either peace or happiness,
let it enfold you.
when I was a young man
I felt that these things were
dumb, unsophisticated.
I had bad blood, a twisted
mind, a precarious
upbringing.
I was hard as granite, I
leered at the
sun.
I trusted no man and
especially no
woman.
I was living a hell in
small rooms, I broke
things, smashed things,
walked through glass,
cursed.
I challenged everything,
was continually being
evicted, jailed, in and
out of fights, in and out
of my mind.
women were something
to screw and rail
at, I had no male
friends,
I changed jobs and
cities, I hated holidays,
babies, history,
newspapers, museums,
grandmothers,
marriage, movies,
spiders, garbagemen,
English accents, Spain,
France, Italy, walnuts and
the color
orange.
algebra angered me,
opera sickened me,
Charlie Chaplin was a
fake
and flowers were for
pansies.
peace and happiness
were to me
signs of
inferiority,
tenants of the weak
and
addled
mind.
but as I went on with
my alley fights,
my suicidal years,
my passage through
any number of
women—it gradually
began to occur to
me
that I wasn’t different
from the
others, I was the
same.
they were all fulsome
with hatred,
glossed over with petty
grievances,
the men I fought in
alleys had hearts of
stone.
everybody was nudging,
inching, cheating for
some insignificant
advantage,
the lie was the
weapon and the
plot was
empty,
darkness was the
dictator.
cautiously, I allowed
myself to feel good
at times.
I found moments of
peace in cheap
rooms
just staring at the
knobs of some
dresser
or listening to the
rain in the
dark.
the less I needed
the better I
felt.
maybe the other
life had worn me
down.
I no longer found
glamour
in topping somebody
in conversation.
or in mounting the
body of some poor
drunken female
whose life had
slipped away into
sorrow.
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.
I reformulated,
I don’t know when,
date, time, all
that
but the change
occurred.
something in me
relaxed, smoothed
out.
I no longer had to
prove that I was a
man,
I didn’t have to prove
anything.
I began to see things:
coffee cups lined up
behind a counter in a
cafe.
or a dog walking along
a sidewalk.
or the way the mouse
on my dresser top
stopped there,
really stopped there
with its body,
its ears,
its nose,
it was fixed,
a bit of life
caught within itself
and
its eyes looked
at me
and they were
beautiful.
then—it was
gone.
I began to feel good,
I began to feel good
in the worst
situations
and there were plenty
of those.
like say, the boss
behind his desk,
he is going to have
to fire me.
I’ve missed too many
days.
he is dressed in a
suit, necktie, glasses,
he says, “I am going
to have to let you go.”
“it’s all right,” I tell
him.
he must do what he
must do, he has a
wife, a house, children,
expenses, most probably
a girlfriend.
I am sorry for him.
he is caught.
I walk out into the blazing
sunshine.
the whole day is
mine.
temporarily,
anyhow.
(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.
I embraced that stuff
like the hottest number,
Betting on the Muse Page 22