What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire
Page 17
passing over my own Grand Canyon
on schedule
no seat belt
no stewardess and
no lost luggage.
they arrived in time
I like to think about writers like James Joyce
Hemingway, Ambrose Bierce, Faulkner, Sherwood
Anderson, Jeffers, D.H. Lawrence, A. Huxley,
John Fante, Gorki, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Saroyan,
Villon, even Sinclair Lewis, and Hamsun, even T.S.
Eliot and Auden, William Carlos Williams and
Stephen Spender and gutsy Ezra Pound.
they taught me so many things that my parents
never taught me, and
I also like to think of Carson McCullers
with her Sad Cafe and Golden Eye.
she too taught me much that my parents
never knew.
I liked to read the hardcover library books
in their simple library bindings
blue and green and brown and light red
I liked the older librarians (male and female)
who stared seriously at one
if you coughed or laughed too loudly,
and even though they looked like my parents
there was no real resemblance.
now I no longer read those authors I once read
with such pleasure,
but it’s good to think about them,
and I also
like to look again at photographs of Hart Crane and
Caresse Crosby at Chantilly, 1929
or at photographs of D.H. Lawrence and Frieda
sunning at Le Moulin, 1928.
I like to see André Malraux in his flying outfit
with a kitten on his chest and
I like photos of Artaud in the madhouse
Picasso at the beach with his strong legs
and his hairless head, and then there’s
D.H. Lawrence milking that cow
and Aldous at Saltwood Castle, Kent, August
1963.
I like to think about these people
they taught me so many things that I
never dreamed of before.
and they taught me well,
very well
when it was so much needed
they showed me so many things
that I never knew were possible.
those friends
deep in my blood
who
when there was no chance
gave me one.
odd
some nights
like this night
seem to crawl down the back of one’s
neck and settle at the base of the skull,
stay there
like that
like this.
it is probably a little prelude to
death,
a warm-up.
I accept.
then the mind becomes like a
movie:
I watch Dostoevsky in a small room
and he is drinking a glass of
milk.
it is not a long movie:
he puts the glass down and it
ends.
then I am back
here.
an air purifier
makes its soft sound behind me.
I smoke too much, the whole room
often turns blue
so now my wife has put in the
air purifier.
now the night has left the back
of my skull.
I lean back in the swivel
chair
pick up a bottle opener shaped
like a horse.
it’s like I’m holding the whole world
here
shaped like a horse.
I put the world down,
open a paper clip and begin to clean
my fingernails.
waiting on death can be perfectly
peaceful.
an interlude
it was on Western Avenue
last night
about 7:30 p.m.
I was walking south
toward Sunset
and on the 2nd floor of
a motel across the street
in the apartment in front
the lights were on
and there was this young man
he must have weighed 400 pounds
he looked 7 feet tall
and 4 feet wide
as he reached over
and rather lazily punched
a naked woman in the face.
another woman jumped up
(this woman was fully clothed)
and he gave her a whack across
the back of the head before he
turned and punched the naked one
in the face again.
there was no screaming and
he seemed almost bored by it all.
then he walked over to the window
and opened it.
he had what looked like
a small roasted chicken in his
hand.
he put it to his mouth
bit nearly half of it away
and began chewing.
he chewed for a moment or
two
then spit the bones carefully
out the window
(I could hear them
fall on the
sidewalk).
good god jesus christ almighty,
have mercy on us all!
then he looked down at me
and smiled
as I quickly moved away
ducking my head down
into the night.
anonymity
I never got to where I was
driving that night after
I exhaled two 15’s on the breath
meter.
they put the cuffs
on me
and I climbed into the back seat
of their squad car
for a ride to the drunk tank at
150 N. Los Angeles Street,
Parker Center.
“what’s your occupation?”
the one not driving asked
me.
“I’m a writer,” I answered.
“you sure don’t look like a
writer to me,” said the
cop.
“oh, I’m famous,” I
said.
“I never heard of you,”
he said.
“I never heard of you either,”
I replied.
they parked, got me out and
walked me up the ramp.
“you sure don’t look like a
writer,” the cop said
again.
inside they took the cuffs
off.
I guess they were right:
I wasn’t famous
and they weren’t sure
what a writer should
look like.
but I knew what cops
looked like.
these were cops
and they were famous
and looked the same
all over the
world.
in a crowded drunk tank
everything was as per usual:
one toilet without a lid
and one pay
telephone, both
being used.
what’s it all mean?
o yes Huxley motorcaded through southern Europe
and wrote a marvelous book about it and Lawrence
made that great painting of a man pissing
and Huxley did the peyote thing and Frieda really
gave Lawrence a base and Huxley said, “it’s up here!”
touching his head and Lawrence said, “it’s down here!”
touching his gut.
Huxley went blind you know and Lawrence had a
sixth sense when it came
to animals and
sometimes I think of Lawrence sometimes I think of
Huxley and sometimes I think of Charo with all that
hair on her head so chi-chi sexy and
then sometimes I think of 2 Mexican boys punching it
out down at the Olympic auditorium o yes
we’ve got a world full of dreams and sometimes
when I can’t sleep
and my mind won’t think of anything at all then I
spend the night
looking up at the dark ceiling.
one-to-five
I know horse racing.
I was there when Porterhouse beat Swaps and
that’s a while back and
I’ve seen some more since.
so there I was in the stands
when the 8th race opened with a one-to-2 favorite on
the program.
“a lock,” the boys liked to call it
but the boys all had rundown heels on their
shoes.
the favorite was a horse they fondly called
Big Cat. actually its name was Cougar II.
he had beaten the same horses while carrying high
weight
had beaten them easily
and now in this race
each horse was to carry 126 pounds.
Cougar read one-to-2 on the program and one-to-5 on
the board.
they applauded him as he walked in the post parade.
I put a deuce on the 2nd favorite who read
8-to-one and waited on the
race.
it was a mile-and-one-half on the grass.
the gate opened and they came down the hill with
Big Cat laying up near the pace—3rd or 4th—
he looked in good position until after they
went down the backstretch and got near the final curve.
Big Cat began falling back.
what the hell was Pincay doing?
cries went up from the stands:
“he isn’t going to make it!”
“my god, he isn’t going to make it!”
then Big Cat seemed to come on again
he had the only red silks in the race
he was very visible out there.
maybe Pincay knew what he was doing:
he was the #1 jock on the #1
horse
but by then
Big Spruce
(at 13-to-one off a morning line of 6)
had run past the early pace setters and
was opening up
12 lengths
halfway down the stretch.
no chance for Big Cat.
Big Spruce won
easily
while Big Cat
had to wait out the photo for
3rd money.
I checked the total on Big Cat off the tote:
over one-half million dollars.
Pincay got sick and scratched out of the
9th race.
Eddie Arcaro
who carried one of the meanest whips in racing
and had ridden them all
once said:
“there’s no such thing as a sure thing.”
(as the history of the world will tell you—
the easier it looks
the harder it gets).
Big Cat lost.
nobody applauded his walk back to the
barn.
in this world
you just can’t lose at
one-to-5
anyhow
not with grace
no matter how many
you’ve won before
that
especially not in
America
nor in Paris or
Spain
nor in Munich or
Japan
nor anywhere else where
humans
dwell.
insanity
sometimes there’s a crazy one in the street.
he lifts his feet carefully as he walks.
he ponders the mystery
of his own anus.
while the American dollar collapses
against the German mark
he’s thinking of Bette Davis and her old movies.
it’s good to bring thought to bear on things
arcane and forbidden.
if only we were crazy enough
to be willing to ignore our
mechanical and static perceptions
we’d know that a half-filled coffee cup
holds more secrets
than, say,
the Grand Canyon.
sometimes there’s a crazy one walking
in the street.
he slips past
walks with a black crow on his shoulder
is not worried about alarm clocks or
approval.
however, almost everybody else is sane, knows the
answers to all the unanswerable questions.
we can park our automobiles
carve a turkey with style and
can laugh at every feeble joke.
the crazy ones only laugh when there is
no reason to
laugh.
in our world
the sane are too numerous,
too submissive.
we are instructed to live lives of boredom.
no matter what we are doing—
screwing or eating or playing or
talking or climbing mountains or
taking baths or flying to India
we are numbed,
sadly sane.
when you see a crazy one walking
in the street
honor him but
leave him alone.
stand out of the way.
there’s no luck like that luck
nothing else so perfect in the world
let him walk untouched
remember that Christ also was insane.
farewell my lovely
she keeps coming back
with different men
I am introduced
and I feel sorry for them
sitting there in their pants and
shirts and stockings and shoes
looking out of their heads with
their eyes
hearing with their ears
speaking out of their mouths
I feel sorry for them
for she is finally going to do to
them
just what she did to me.
she hates men but captures and tortures them
with her beautiful, youthful body.
the last time she was over
she followed me
into the kitchen
leaving him sitting alone out there.
“I miss you,” she said, “I really
do. I mean it.”
I knew what she missed. she missed
having a man securely caught in her
net. I stepped around her with
the drinks and walked back into the
other room.
she watched me with her eyes
as she continued to talk.
she had watched me go crazy with the
agony of losing her
so many times before.
now she knew I was free
and when the victim escapes the
executioner
it is hell for the
executioner.
she felt it. she said to him,
“let’s get out of here.”
they left and began to walk away
toward the street.
I noticed she had left her coat, the
one with the dark
hood.
“hey!” I shouted, “you left your
coat!”
she ran back to the door:
“oh, thank you!” she said
taking the coat with
one
hand
and with the other hand
behind the door
where he couldn’t see
she gave me the
finger,
vigorously.
I closed the door.
it hadn’t been too
bad
they hadn’t used up much of
my time
at most
maybe fifteen
minutes.
comments upon my last book of poesy:
you’re better than ever.
you’ve sold out.
you suck.
my mother hates you.
you’re rich.
you’re the best writer in the English language.
can I come see you?
I write just like you do, only better.
why do you drive a BMW?
why don’t you give more readings?
can you still get it up?
do you know Allen Ginsberg?
what do you think of Henry Miller?
will you write a foreword to my next book?
I enclose a photograph of Céline.
I enclose my grandfather’s pocket watch.
the enclosed jacket was knitted by my wife in Bavarian style.
have you been drunk with Mickey Rourke?
I am a young girl 19 years old and I will come and clean your house.
you are a stinking bastard to tell people that Shakespeare is not readable.
what do you think of Norman Mailer?
why do you steal from Hemingway?
why do you knock Tolstoy?
I’m doing hard time and when I get out I’m coming to see you.
I think you suck ass.
you’ve saved my god-damned life.
why do you hate women?
I love you.
I read your poems at parties.
did all those things really happen to you?
why do you drink?
I saw you at the racetrack but I didn’t bother you.