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Posted by "Bukowski" on Mon, January 23rd, 2012, 7:13 PM - Never Expires
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1
 
my wrists are rivers 
my fingers are words 
 
― 15 ―
jam
 
that Harbor Freeway south through the downtown
area—I mean, it can simply become
unbelievable .
 
last Friday evening I was sitting there
motionless behind a wall of red taillights,
there wasn't even first gear movement
as masses of exhaust fumes
greyed the evening air, engines over-
heated
and there was the smell of a clutch
burning out
somewhere—
it seemed to come from ahead of me—
from that long slow rise of freeway where
the cars were working
from first gear to neutral
again and again
and from neutral back to
first gear.
 
on the radio I heard the news
of that day
at least 6 times, I was
well versed in world
affairs.
the remainder of the stations played a
thin, sick music.
the classical stations refused to come in
clearly
and when they did
it was a stale repetition of standard and
tiresome works.
 
― 16 ―
I turned the radio off.
a strange whirling began in my
head—it circled behind the forehead, clock-
wise, went past the ears and around to the
back of the head, then back to the forehead
and around
again.
I began to wonder, is this what happens
when one goes
mad?
 
I considered getting out of my car.
I was in the so-called fast
lane.
I could see myself out there
out of my car
leaning against the freeway divider,
arms folded.
then I would slide down to a sitting
position, putting my head between
my legs.
 
I stayed in the car, bit my tongue, turned
the radio back on, willed the whirling to
stop
as I wondered if any of the others had to
battled against their
compulsions
as I did?
 
then the car ahead of me
MOVED
a foot, 2 feet, 3 feet!
 
I shifted to first gear ...
there was MOVEMENT!
then I was back in neutral
BUT
we had moved from 7 to
ten feet.
 
― 17 ―
hearing the world news for the
7th time,
it was still all bad
but all of us listening,
we could handle that too
because we knew
that there was nothing worse than
looking at
that same license plate
that same dumb head sticking up
from behind the headrest
in the car ahead of you
as time dissolved
as the temperature gauge leaned
more to the right
as the gas gauge leaned
more to the left
as we wondered
whose clutch was burning
out?
 
we were like some last, vast
final dinosaur
crawling feebly home somewhere,
somehow, maybe
to
die.
― 18 ―
two toughs
 
at L.A. City College there were two toughs, me and Jed
Anderson.
Anderson was one of the best running backs in the
history of the school, a real breakaway threat
anytime he got the football.
I was pretty tough physically but looked at sports
as a game for freaks.
I thought a bigger game was challenging those
who attempted to teach
us.
 
anyhow, Jed and I were the two biggest lights on
campus, he piled up his 60, 70 and 80 yard
runs in the night games
and during the days
slouched in my seat
I made up what I didn't know
and what I did know
was so bad
many a teacher was made to
dance to it.
 
and one grand day
Jed and I
finally met.
it was at a little jukebox place
across from campus and
he was sitting with his
pals
and I was sitting with
mine.
 
― 19 ―
"go on! go on! talk to him!"
my pals
urged.
I said, "fuck that gym
boy. I am one with
Nietzsche, let him come
over here!"
 
finally Jed got up to get a
pack of smokes from the
machine and one of my
friends asked,
"are you afraid of that
man?"
 
I got up and walked behind
Jed as he was reaching into the
machine
for his pack.
 
"hello, Jed," I
said.
 
he turned: "hello,
Hank."
 
then he reached into his
rear pocket,
pulled out a pint of
whiskey, handed it to
me.
 
I took a mighty hit,
handed it
back.
 
"Jed, what are you
going to do
after
L.A.C.C.?"
 
"I'm going to play
for Notre Dame."
― 20 ―
 
then he walked back
to his table
and I walked back
to mine.
 
"what'd he say? what'd
he say?"
 
"nothing much."
 
anyhow, Jed never made it
to Notre Dame
and I never made it
anywhere
either—
the years just swept us
away
but there were others
who went
on, including one fellow
who became a famous
sports columnist
and I had to look at his
photo
for decades
in the newspaper
as I inherited those
cheap rooms
and those roaches
and those airless
dreary
nights.
 
― 21 ―
but
I was still proud of that moment
back then
when Jed handed me
that pint
and
I drained
a third of it
with all the disciples
watching.
damn, there was no way
it seemed
we could ever
lose
but we did.
 
and it took me
3 or 4 decades to
move on just a
little.
and Jed,
if you are still here
tonight,
(I forgot to tell you
then)
here's a thanks
for that drink.
― 22 ―
my German buddy
 
tonight
drinking Singha
malt liquor from
Thailand
and listening to
Wagner
 
I can't believe that
he is not in
the other
room
or around the
corner
or alive
someplace
tonight
 
and he is
of course
as I am taken
by the sound of
him
 
and little goosebumps
run along
both of my
arms
 
then a
chill
 
he's here
 
now.
― 23 ―
happy birthday
 
when Wagner was an
old man
a birthday party was given
in his
honor
and a couple of
youthful
incidental compositions
were played.
 
afterwards
he asked,
"who wrote those?"
 
"you did," he was
told.
 
"ah," he responded,
"it's as I have always
suspected: death
then
does have some
virtue."
― 24 ―
the telephone
 
will bring you people
with its ring,
people who do not know what to do with
their time
and they will ache to
infect you with
this
from a distance
(although they would prefer
to actually be in the same room
to better project their nullity upon
you).
 
the telephone is needed for
emergency purposes only.
 
these people are not
emergencies, they are
calamities.
 
I have never welcomed the ring of a
telephone.
 
"hello," I will answer
guardedly.
 
"this is Dwight."
 
already you can feel their imbecile
yearning to invade.
they are the people-fleas that
crawl the
psyche.
 
"yes, what is it?"
― 25 ―
 
"well, I'm in town tonight and
I thought ..."
 
"listen, Dwight, I'm tied up, I
can't ..."
 
"well, maybe another
time?"
 
"maybe not ..."
 
each person is only given so many
evenings
and each wasted evening is
a gross violation against the
natural course of
your only
life;
besides, it leaves an aftertaste
which often lasts two or three days
depending upon the
visitor.
 
the telephone is only for
emergency purposes.
 
it has taken me
decades
but I have finally found out
how to say
"no."
 
now
don't be concerned for them,
please:
they will simply dial another
number.
 
it could be
yours.
― 26 ―
 
"hello," you will
say.
 
and they will say,
"this is Dwight."
 
and then
you
be
the kind
understanding
soul.
― 27 ―
begging
 
like most of you, I've had so many jobs that
I feel as if I were gutted and my insides
thrown to the winds.
I've met some good people along the
way and also the
other kind.
yet when I think of all those
I have worked with—
even though decades have passed—
Karl
comes to mind
first.
 
I remember Karl: our jobs required we
both wear aprons
tied from behind and around
the neck with string.
 
I was Karl's underling.
"we got an easy job," he
told me.
 
each day as one by one our superiors arrived
Karl would make a slight bend at the waist,
smile, and with a nod of the head
greet each: "good morning Dr. Stein,"
or, "good morning Mr. Day" or
Mrs. Knight or if the lady was unattached
"good morning, Lilly" or Betty or Fran.
 
I never
spoke.
 
― 28 ―
Karl seemed concerned at this and
one day he took me aside: "hey,
where the fuck else you going to get a
two hour lunch like we
do?"
 
"nowhere, I guess ..."
 
"well, o.k., look, for guys like you and me,
this is as good as it can get, this is all
there is."
 
I waited.
 
"so look, it's hard to suck up to them at first, it
didn't come easy for me
but after a while I realized that it
didn't matter.
I just grew a shell.
now I've got my shell, got
it?"
 
I looked at him and sure enough he did look like he had
a shell, there was a mask-like look to his
face and the eyes were null, void and
undisturbed; I was looking at a weathered and
beaten conch.
 
 
some weeks went by.
nothing changed: Karl bowed and scraped and smiled
undaunted, perfect in his
role.
that we were perishable , perhaps didn't occur to
him
or
that greater gods might be
watching.
 
I did my
work.
― 29 ―
 
then, one day, Karl took me
aside again.
 
"listen, Dr. Morely spoke to me
about you."
 
"yes?"
 
"he asked me what was wrong with
you."
 
"what did you tell
him?"
 
"I told him that you were
young."
 
"thanks."
 
upon receiving my next check, I
quit
 
but
 
still
had to
eventually settle for another similar
job
and
viewing the
new Karls
I finally forgave them all
but not myself:
 
― 30 ―
being perishable sometimes makes a
man
strange
almost
unemployable
most
obnoxious—
no servant of
free
enterprise.
― 31 ―
the feel of it
 
A. Huxley died at 69,
much too early for such a
fierce talent,
and I read all his
works
but actually
Point Counter Point
did help a bit
in carrying me through
the factories and the
drunk tanks and the
unsavory
ladies.
that
book
along with Hamsun's
Hunger
they helped a
bit.
great books are
the ones we
need.
 
― 32 ―
I was astonished at
myself for liking the
Huxley book
but it did come from
such a rabid
beautiful
pessimistic
intellectualism,
and when I first
read P.C.P.
I was living in a
hotel room
with a wild and
crazy
alcoholic woman
who once threw
Pound's Cantos
at me
and missed,
as they did
with me.
 
I was working
as a packer
in a light fixture
plant
and once
during a drinking
bout
I told the lady,
"here, read this!"
(referring to
Point Counter
Point .)
 
"ah, jam it up
your ass!" she
screamed at
me.
 
anyhow, 69 seemed
too early for Aldous
Huxley to
die.
but I guess it's
just as fair
as the death of a
scrubwoman
at the same
age.
 
― 33 ―
it's just that
with those who
help us
get on through,
then
all that light
dying, it works the
gut a bit—
scrubwomen, cab drivers,
cops, nurses, bank
robbers, priests,
fishermen, fry cooks,
jockeys and the
like
be
damned.
― 34 ―
the greatest actor of our day
 
he's getting fatter and fatter,
almost bald
he has a wisp of hair
in the back
which he twists
and holds
with a rubber band.
 
he's got a place in the hills
and he's got a place in the
islands
and few people ever see
him.
some consider him the greatest
actor of our
day.
 
he has few friends, a
very few.
with them, his favorite
pastime is
eating.
 
at rare times he is reached
by telephone
usually
with an offer to act
in an exceptional (he's
told)
motion picture.
 
he answers in a very soft
voice:
 
"oh, no, I don't want to
make any more movies ..."
― 35 ―
 
"can we send you the
screenplay?"
 
"all right ..."
 
then
he's not heard from
again.
 
usually
what he and his few friends
do
after eating
(if the night is cold)
is to have a few drinks
and watch the screenplays
burn
in the fireplace.
 
― 36 ―
or
after eating (on
warm evenings)
after a few
drinks
the screenplays
are taken
frozen
out of cold
storage.
he hands some
to his friends
keeps some
then
together
from the veranda
they toss them
like flying saucers
far out
into the spacious
canyon
below.
 
then
they all go
back in
knowing
instinctively
that the screenplays
were
bad. (at least,
he senses it and
they
accept
that.)
 
it's a real good
world
up there:
well-earned, self-
sufficient
and
hardly
dependent
upon the
variables.
 
there's
all that time
to eat
drink
and
wait on death
like
everybody
else.
― 37 ―
days like razors, nights full of rats
 
as a very young man I divided an equal amount of time between
the bars and the libraries; how I managed to provide for
my other ordinary needs is the puzzle; well, I simply didn't
bother too much with that—
if I had a book or a drink then I didn't think too much of
other things—fools create their own
paradise.
 
in the bars, I thought I was a tough, I broke things, fought
other men, etc.
 
in the libraries it was another matter: I was quiet, went
from room to room, didn't so much read entire books
as parts of them: medicine, geology, literature and
philosophy. psychology, math, history, other things, put me
off. with music I was more interested in the music and in the
lives of the composers than in the technical aspects ...
 
however, it was with the philosophers that I felt a brotherhood:
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, even old hard-to-read Kant;
I found Santayana, who was very popular at the time, to be
limp and a bore; Hegel you really had to dig for, especially
with a hangover; there are many I read who I have forgotten,
perhaps properly so, but I remember one fellow who wrote an
entire book in which he proved that the moon was not there
and he did it so well that afterwards you thought, he's
absolutely right, the moon is not there.
 
how the hell is a young man going to deign to work an
8 hour day when the moon isn't even there?
what else
might be missing?
 
― 38 ―
and
I didn't like literature so much as I did the literary
critics; they were real pricks, those guys; they used
fine language, beautiful in its way, to call other
critics, other writers, assholes. they
perked me up.
 
but it was the philosophers who satisfied
that need
that lurked somewhere within my confused skull: wading
through their excesses and their
clotted vocabulary
they still often
stunned
leaped out
with a flaming gambling statement that appeared to be
absolute truth or damned near
absolute truth,
and this certainty was what I was searching for in a daily
life that seemed more like a piece of
cardboard.
 
what great fellows those old dogs were, they got me past
days like razors and nights full of rats; and women
bargaining like auctioneers from hell.
 
my brothers, the philosophers, they spoke to me unlike
anybody on the streets or anywhere else; they
filled an immense void.
such good boys, ah, such good
boys!
 
yes, the libraries helped; in my other temple, the
bars, it was another matter, more simplistic, the
language and the way was
different ...
 
― 39 ―
library days, bar nights.
the nights were alike,
there's some fellow sitting nearby, maybe not a
bad sort, but for me he doesn't shine right,
there's a gruesome deadness there—I think of my father,
of schoolteachers, of faces on coins and bills, of dreams
about murderers with dull eyes; well,
somehow this fellow and I get to exchanging glances,
a fury slowly begins to gather: we are enemies, cat and
dog, priest and atheist, fire and water; tension builds,
block piled upon block, waiting for the crash; our hands
fold and unfold, we drink, now, finally with a
purpose:
 
his face turns to me:
"sumpin' ya don't like, buddy?"
 
"yeah. you."
 
"wanna do sumpin' about it?"
 
"certainly."
 
we finish our drinks, rise, move to the back of the
bar, out into the alley; we
turn, face each other.
 
I say to him, "there's nothing but space between us. you
care to close that
space?"
 
he rushes toward me and somehow it's a part of the part of the
part.
― 40 ―
in and out of the dark
 
my wife likes movie houses, the popcorn and soft drinks, the
settling into seats, she finds a child's delight in
this and I am happy for her—but really, I myself, I must have
come from another place, I must have been a mole in another
life, something that burrowed and hid alone:
the other people crowded in the seats, near and far, give me
feelings that I dislike; it's stupid, maybe, but there it
is; and then
there's the darkness and then the
giant human faces, bodies, that move about on the screen, they
speak and we
listen.
 
of one hundred movies there's one that's fair, one that's good
and ninety eight that are very bad.
most movies start badly and steadily get
worse;
if you can believe the actions and speech of the
characters
you might even believe that the popcorn you chew also
has a meaning of
sorts.
(well, it might be that people see so many movies
that when they finally see one not
so bad as the others, they think it's
great. an Academy Award means that you don't stink
quite as much as your cousin.)
 
the movie ends and we are out in the street, moving
toward the car; "well," says my wife, "it wasn't as
good as they say."
"no," I say, "it wasn't."
 
"there were a few good parts, though," she replies.
"yeah," I answer.
― 41 ―
 
we are at the car, get in, then I am driving us out
of that part of town; we look around at the night;
the night looks good.
 
"you hungry?" she asks.
 
"yes. you?"
 
we stop at a signal; I watch the red light;
I could eat that red light—anything, anything at
all to fill the void; millions of dollars spent to create
something more terrible than the actual lives of
most living things; one should never have to pay an
admission to hell.
 
the light changes and we escape,
forward.
― 42 ―
be kind
 
we are always asked
to understand the other person's
viewpoint
no matter how
out-dated
foolish or
obnoxious.
 
one is asked
to view
their total error
their life-waste
with
kindliness,
especially if they are
aged.
 
but age is the total of
our doing.
they have aged
badly
because they have
lived
out of focus,
they have refused to
see.
 
not their fault?
 
whose fault?
mine?
 
― 43 ―
I am asked to hide
my viewpoint
from them
for fear of their
fear.
 
age is no crime
 
but the shame
of a deliberately
wasted
life
 
among so many
deliberately
wasted
lives
 
is.
― 44 ―
the man with the beautiful eyes
 
when we were kids
there was a strange house
all the shades were
always
drawn
and we never heard voices
in there
and the yard was full of
bamboo
and we liked to play in
the bamboo
pretend we were
Tarzan
(although there was no
Jane).
and there was a
fish pond
a large one
full of the
fattest goldfish
you ever saw
and they were
tame.
they came to the
surface of the water
and took pieces of
bread
from our hands.
 
our parents had
told us:
"never go near that
house."
so, of course,
we went.
― 45 ―
 
we wondered if anybody
lived there.
weeks went by and we
never saw
anybody.
 
then one day
we heard
a voice
from the house
"YOU GOD DAMNED
WHORE!"
 
it was a man's
voice.
 
then the screen
door
of the house was
flung open
and the man
walked
out.
 
― 46 ―
he was holding a
fifth of whiskey
in his right
hand.
he was about
30.
he had a cigar
in his
mouth,
needed a
shave.
his hair was
wild and
uncombed
and he was
barefoot
in undershirt
and pants.
but his eyes
were
bright.
they blazed
with
brightness
and he said,
"hey, little
gentlemen,
having a good
time, I
hope?"
 
then he gave a
little laugh
and walked
back into the
house.
 
we left,
went back to my
parents' yard
and thought
about it.
 
― 47 ―
our parents,
we decided,
had wanted us
to stay away
from there
because they
never wanted us
to see a man
like
that,
a strong natural
man
with
beautiful
eyes.
 
our parents
were ashamed
that they were
not
like that
man,
that's why they
wanted us
to stay
away.
 
but
we went back
to that house
and the bamboo
and the tame
goldfish.
we went back
many times
for many
weeks
but we never
saw
or heard
the man
again.
 
the shades were
down
as always
and it was
quiet.
 
― 48 ―
then one day
as we came back from
school
we saw the
house.
 
it had burned
down,
there was nothing
left,
just a smoldering
twisted black
foundation
and we went to
the fish pond
and there was
no water
in it
and the fat
orange goldfish
were dead
there,
drying out.
 
we went back to
my parents' yard
and talked about
it
and decided that
our parents had
burned their
house down,
had killed
them
had killed the
goldfish
because it was
all too
beautiful,
even the bamboo
forest had
burned.
― 49 ―
 
they had been
afraid of
the man with the
beautiful
eyes.
 
and
we were afraid
then
that
all throughout our lives
things like that
would
happen,
that nobody
wanted
anybody
to be
strong and
beautiful
like that,
that
others would never
allow it,
and that
many people
would have to
die.
― 50 ―
a strange day
 
it was one of those hot and tiring days at Hollywood
Park
with a huge crowd, a
tiring, rude, dumb
crowd.
 
I won the last race and stayed to collect and when I
got to my car
there was a massive jam of traffic attempting to
work its way out of there.
 
so I took my shoes off, sat and waited, turned on the
radio, lucked onto some classical music, found
a pint of Scotch in the glove compartment, un-
capped it, had a
hit.
 
I'm going to let them all get out of here, I
thought, then I'll
go.
 
I found ¾'s of a cigar, lit it, had another hit
of Scotch.
 
I listened to the music, smoked, drank the
Scotch and watched the losers
leave.
 
there was even a little crap game going
about 100 yards to the
east
 
then that
broke up.
 
I decided to finish the
pint.
― 51 ―
 
I did, then stretched out on the
seat.
 
I don't know how long I
slept
but when I awakened it was dark and
the parking lot was
empty.
 
I decided not to put on my shoes, started the car
and drove out of
there....
 
when I got back to my place I could hear the phone
ringing.
 
as I put the key in the door and opened it,
the phone kept
ringing.
 
I walked over, picked up the
phone.
 
"hello?"
 
"you son of a bitch, where have you
been?"
 
"the racetrack."
 
"the racetrack? it's 12:30 a.m.! I've been
phoning since
7 p.m.!"
 
"I just got in from the
racetrack."
― 52 ―
 
"you got some woman
there?"
 
"no."
 
"I don't believe you!"
she hung up.
 
I walked to the refrigerator, got a beer, went to
the bathroom, let the water run in the
tub.
I finished the beer, got another, opened it and
climbed into the
tub.
 
the phone rang
again.
 
I got out of the tub with my beer and
dripping away
I walked to the phone, picked it
up.
 
"hello?"
 
"you son of a bitch, I still don't
believe you!"
 
she hung up.
 
I walked back to the tub with my beer,
leaving another trail of
water.
 
as I got back into the tub
the phone rang
again.
 
― 53 ―
I let it ring, counting the
rings: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,
10,11,12,13,14,15,
16 ...
 
she hung up.
 
then, perhaps, 3 or 4 minutes
passed.
 
the phone rang
again.
 
I counted the rings:
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,
9 ...
 
then it was
quiet.
 
about then I remembered I had
left my shoes in the
car.
no matter, except I only had
one pair.
 
chances were, though, that nobody
would ever want to steal that
car.
 
I got out of the tub for another
beer,
leaving another trail
behind me.
 
it was the end of a
long
long
day.
― 54 ―
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.
― 55 ―
 
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 new-found
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."
 
― 56 ―
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.
 
― 57 ―
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.
― 58 ―
air and light and time and space
 
"—you know, I've either had a family, a job, something
has always been in the
way
but now
I've sold my house, I've found this
place, a large studio, you should see the space and
the light .
for the first time in my life I'm going to have a place and the time to
create ."
 
no baby, if you're going to create
you're going to create whether you work
16 hours a day in a coal mine
or
you're going to create in a small room with 3 children
while you're on
welfare,
you're going to create with part of your mind and your
body blown
away,
you're going to create blind
crippled
demented,
you're going to create with a cat crawling up your
back while
the whole city trembles in earthquake, bombardment,
flood and fire.
 
baby, air and light and time and space
have nothing to do with it
and don't create anything
except maybe a longer life to find
new excuses
for.
― 59 ―
the eagle of the heart—
 
what will they be writing about 2,000 years from
now
if they are
here?
 
now
I drink cabernet sauvignon while
listening to
Bach: it's
most curious: this
continuing death
this
continuing life
 
as
I look at this hand
holding a cigarette
I feel as if
I have been here
forever.
 
now
troops with bayonets
sack
the town below.
my dog, Tony, smiles at
me.
 
― 60 ―
it is well
to feel good
for no reason;
or
with a limited
choice to
choose
anyhow;
or with a little love,
not to buckle to
hatred.
faith, brother, not in the
gods
but in
yourself:
don't ask,
tell.
 
I tell you
such fine
music
waits
in the
shadows
of
hell.
― 61 ―
bright red car
 
I try to avoid speed duels on the freeway but the most curious thing
is
that all my speeding tickets are when I am quietly driving along on
my
own.
 
when I am in a high speed duel, darting in and out of lanes
at near 100 m.p.h.
the police are never
about.
 
when I get tagged for speeding it is for cruising along,
day-dreaming, at a mere 70
m.p.h.
 
I received 3 such nonsensical tickets in 3 weeks so
I laid low for some time—2 years, in fact, but today
out there
there was a fellow in a bright red car, I have no idea what
model or kind
and I have no idea of how it all started but I believe that
I started it:
I was in the fast lane going about 70
and I caught the flash of bright red in my rear view and
as he swung out to pass me on the right
he was doing 75
and there was time for him to pass
then cut into the fast lane ahead of me
but something made me hit the throttle and cut him
off
locking him in behind an old lady with a CHRIST
SAVES bumper sticker.
this seemed to piss him no end
and next I knew he had swung over on my bumper,
so close that his windshield and my taillights
seemed one.
― 62 ―
 
this pissed me no end and I was being blocked by a
green Volks directly ahead
but I cut right through an opening and shot
ahead.
bright red went wild, spotted the far lane open,
roared over and gunned it
along.
 
after that, it was just me and bright red
jockeying for spots.
 
he would garner a lead, then with a crazy gamble
of lane change I would regain the
lead.
 
during this duel my destination was forgotten and I'm
sure his was
too.
 
watching him, I couldn't help but admire his driving
skill; he took a few more chances than I
but I had a little bit the better machine
so it
just about evened out.
 
then
suddenly
we were alone: a freak break in the traffic
had set us free together
and we really opened
up.
 
he had a short lead but my machine slowly gained; I
inched up near him,
then I was at his side and I couldn't help but
look over.
 
he was a young Japanese-American, maybe 18, 19
and I looked at him and
laughed.
― 63 ―
 
I saw him check me out.
he saw a 70 year old white man
with a face like
Frankenstein.
 
the young man took his foot off the throttle and
dropped back.
 
I let him go.
 
I turned the radio
on.
 
I was 18 miles past my destination but it
didn't matter.
 
it was a beautiful sunny day.
― 64 ―
moving toward the 21st century
 
it was a New Year's Eve party at my place
I think.
I was standing holding a drink when
this slender young fellow walked up
he was a bit drunk he said
 
"Hank, I met a woman who said
she was married to you for 2
years."
 
"really?
what was her
name?"
 
"Lola
Edwards."
 
"never heard of
her."
 
"ah, come on, man, she
said ..."
 
"don't know her,
baby ..."
 
in fact I didn't know who
he was ...
 
I drained my drink walked to the kitchen
poured a refill
 
I looked around yes, I was at my place
I recognized the
kitchen.
― 65 ―
 
another
Happy New Year.
 
Jesus.
 
I walked out to face the
people.
― 66 ―
the lady and the mountain lion
 
it was hardly a wilderness area
but it was countryside
and there had been a paucity of
rainfall—also some housing
construction on the
hillsides.
 
small game was dying
out.
the coyotes were the first of
the famished to
arrive
looking for
chickens
cats
anything.
 
in fact, a group attacked
a man on horseback
tearing his arm
but he
escaped.
 
then
in a park
there was the lady who
left her car to
go to the public
restroom.
 
― 67 ―
she had closed the stall
door
when she heard a
soft
sound,
the stealth of
padded
feet.
 
then
as she sat there
the mountain lion stuck
his head under the
stall door.
 
a truly beautiful
animal.
 
then
the head withdrew, the cat
knocked over a trash can, circled,
emitted a slow
growl.
 
the lady climbed up
on the toilet
then grasped an overhead
pipe
and
swung herself completely up
(fear creates abnormal
acts) and sat where
she could watch
the cat.
 
at once
the cat put his
paws up
on the wash basin
stuck his head in
there
and lapped at a dripping
spigot.
 
― 68 ―
then
he sank
low upon the floor
crouched
facing the doorway
 
then
zing
was gone
out of there.
 
then
at last
the lady began
screaming.
 
when the people
arrived
the cat was nowhere to be
seen.
 
the story made the
newspapers and the television
stations.
 
the story that won't be told is
that the lady
will never go to the bathroom
again
without thinking of a
mountain
lion.
 
a truly beautiful
animal.
― 69 ―
a laugh a minute
 
come on, let's go see him, this old guy is a
kick in the ass, 50 years old, he sits around
in his shorts and underwear
drinking wine out of this chipped white
cup.
he sits with the shades pulled down and
he's never owned a tv set.
the only time he goes out is for more
wine
or to the racetrack in his baby blue
'58 Comet.
 
you get there and he's distraught, some woman
has always left forever and
he pretends to play it with bravado but
his little slit eyes are filled with
pain.
 
he'll pour drinks all around, he just gulps
that crap down and then sometimes he'll
get up and puke.
it's really something. you
can hear him for blocks.
then he'll come out and pour another
drink.
he'll go on and on drinking
and then once in a while he'll say something
crazy like, "anything 3 dogs can do, 4 dogs
can do better!"
other things too.
or he'll smash a glass or a bottle against
the wall.
 
― 70 ―
he worked as an orderly in a
hospital for 15 years
then quit.
he never sleeps at night.
 
and for a guy that ugly
I don't see how he gets all his
women.
and he's jealous.
just look at one of his women
and he'll swing on you.
 
then he gets drunk and tells crazy
stories and sings.
and guess what? he writes
poetry.
 
come on, let's go see him, this old guy
is a kick in the
ass!
― 71 ―
hello, Hamsun
 
after two-and-one-half bottles
that have not strengthened my saddened
heart
 
walking from this drunken
darkness
toward the bedroom
thinking of Hamsun who
ate his own flesh to
gain time to
write
 
I trundle into the other
room
an old
man
 
a hellfish in the night
swimming upward
sideways
down.
― 72 ―
death is smoking my cigars
 
you know: I'm drunk once again
here
listening to Tchaikovsky
on the radio.
Jesus, I heard him 47 years
ago
when I was a starving writer
and here he is
again
and now I am a minor success as
a writer
and death is walking
up and down
this room
smoking my cigars
taking hits of my
wine
as Tchaik is working away
at the Pathétique ,
it's been some journey
and any luck I've had was
because I rolled the dice
right:
I starved for my art, I starved to
gain 5 god-damned minutes, 5 hours,
5 days—
I just wanted to get the word
down;
fame, money, didn't matter:
I wanted the word down
and they wanted me at a punch press,
a factory assembly line
they wanted me to be a stock boy in a
department store.
 
― 73 ―
well, death says, as he walks by,
I'm going to get you anyhow
no matter what you've been:
writer, cab-driver, pimp, butcher,
sky-diver, I'm going to get
you ...
 
o.k. baby, I tell him.
 
we drink together now
as one a.m. slides to 2
a.m. and
only he knows the
moment, but I worked a con
on him: I got my
5 god-damned minutes
and much
more.
― 74 ―
hock shops
 
were always all right with me
because when I tried to sell something in the street
there were no takers.
 
of course, the shops offered far less than real value;
they had to profit on the
resale,
but at least, they were
there.
 
my favorite shop was a place in Los Angeles—
this fellow would lead me to a booth where
he would gather a black curtain all around
us,
it slid on little rings
and then
we would be enclosed.
 
and it always went like
this:
 
"show me," he would
say.
 
I would place the item on the table under
the very strong
light.
 
he would examine the item, then look at me
for some time.
 
"I can't give you very much for
this."
 
another pause, then he would name his
price.
― 75 ―
 
the offer was always more than I
expected.
 
"I'll take $10," I would name a
higher price.
 
"no," he would answer, "in fact ..."
and then he would mention a lower price
than his original
offer.
 
at times I would attempt to joke with
him:
 
"if I stay here long enough, I'll be
paying you ..."
 
he wouldn't smile.
 
"we don't have to do business at
all."
 
"listen, I'll accept your first
offer ..."
 
"very well," he would say,
"but I will lose on
this ..."
 
then he would write out the
pawn ticket and give me the
money.
 
"please be sure to read your ticket,
there are
stipulations."
 
then he would turn off the light
and pull the black curtain
away ...
― 76 ―
 
sometimes I was able to retrieve one
of the items
but eventually they all returned
forever.
 
also, I found out that the one thing
you could sell in the bars and on the
street were
hock shop tickets.
 
the hock shops helped me through some terrible
times and I was glad they were
there when nothing else
was, and that booth with the black
curtain: what a marvelous sanctuary,
a place to give up something for
something else that you needed
much more.
 
how many typewriters, suits, gloves and
watches I left in the hock shops
I have no
idea,
but those places were always
all right
with me.
― 77 ―
hell is a closed door
 
even when starving
the rejection slips hardly ever bothered me:
I only believed that the editors were
truly stupid
and I just went on and wrote more and
more.
I even considered rejects as
action ; the worst was the empty
mailbox.
 
if I had a weakness or a dream
it was
that I only wanted to see one of these
editors
who rejected me,
to see his or her face, the way they
dressed, the way they walked across a
room, the sound of their voice, the look
in their eye ...
just one look at one of
them—
 
you see, when all you look at is
a piece of printed paper
telling you that you
aren't very good,
then there is a tendency
to think that the editors
are more god-like than
they are.
 
hell is a closed door
when you're starving for your god-
damned art
but sometimes you feel at least like having a
peek through the
keyhole.
― 78 ―
 
young or old, good or bad,
I don't think anything dies as slow and
as hard as a
writer.
― 79 ―
pulled down shade
 
what I like about you
she told me
is that you're crude—
look at you sitting there
a beercan in your hand
and a cigar in your mouth
and look at
your dirty hairy belly
sticking out from
under your shirt.
you've got your shoes off
and you've got a hole
in your right stocking
with the big toe
sticking out.
you haven't shaved in
4 or 5 days.
your teeth are yellow
and your eyebrows
hang down
all twisted
and you've got enough
scars
to scare the shit
out of anybody.
there's always
a ring
in your bathtub
your telephone
is covered with
grease
and
half the crap in
your refrigerator is
rotten.
you never
wash your car.
― 80 ―
you've got newspapers
a week old
on the floor.
you read dirty
magazines
and you don't have
a tv
but you order
deliveries from the
liquor store
and you tip
good.
and best of all
you don't push
a woman to
go to bed
with you.
you seem hardly
interested
and when I talk to you
you don't
say anything
you just
look around
the room or
scratch your
neck
like you don't
hear me.
you've got an old
wet towel in
the sink
and a photo of
Mussolini
on the wall
and you never
complain
about anything
and you never
ask questions
― 81 ―
and I've
known you for
6 months
but I have
no idea
who you are.
you're like
some
pulled down shade
but that's what
I like about
you:
your crudeness:
a woman can
drop
out of your
life and
forget you
real fast.
a woman
can't go anywhere
but UP
after
leaving you,
honey.
you've got to
be
the best thing
that ever
happened
to
a girl
who's between
one guy
and the next
and has nothing
to do
at the moment.
this fucking
― 82 ―
Scotch is
great.
let's play
Scrabble.
― 83 ―
before Aids
 
I'm glad I got to them
all, I'm glad I got so many of them
in.
 
I flipped them
poked them
gored them.
 
so many high-heeled shoes
under my bed
it looked like a January
Clearance Sale.
 
the cheap hotel rooms,
the drunken fights,
the phones ringing,
the walls banging
 
I was
wild
red-eyed
big-balled
unshaven
poor
foul-mouthed
I laughed
plenty
 
and I picked them off
the barstools
like
ripe plums.
 
― 84 ―
dirty sheets
bad whiskey
bad breath
cheap cigars
and to hell with the next
morning.
 
I always slept with my
wallet under my
pillow
bedded down with the
depressed and the
crazies.
 
I was barred from half the
hotels in
Los Angeles.
 
I'm glad I got to them all,
I plugged and banged and
sang and
some of them
sang with me
on those glorious
3 a.m. mornings.
when the cops
arrived, that was
grand,
we barricaded the doors
and taunted
them
and they never waited around
until noon
(checking-out time) to
arrest us,
we weren't that
important
 
― 85 ―
but
I thought we were
walking toward the bar,
and what a place the bar was
around noon, so quiet and
empty,
a place to begin
again,
to buck up with a quiet
beer,
looking out across at the
park
with the ducks over there
and the tall trees
over there.
 
so,
always broke but always
money from somewhere,
I waited
getting ready to
plug and bang and poke
and sing again
in those good old times
in those very very very
good old times
before Aids.
― 86 ―
hunk of rock
 
Nina was the hardest of them
all,
the worst woman I had known
up to that moment
and I was sitting in front of
my secondhand black and white
tv
watching the news
when I heard a suspicious
sound in the kitchen
and I ran out there
and saw her with
a full bottle of whiskey—
a 5th—
and she had it and
was headed for the back porch
door
but I caught her and
grabbed at the bottle.
"give me that bottle, you
fucking whore!"
and we wrestled for the
bottle
and let me tell you
she gave me a good fight
for it
but
I got it away from her
and I told her to
get her ass out of
there.
she lived in the same place
in the back
upstairs.
 
― 87 ―
I locked the door
took the bottle and a
glass
went out to the couch
sat down and
opened the bottle and
poured myself a good
one.
 
I shut off the tv and
sat there
thinking about what a
hard number
Nina was.
I came up with
at least
a dozen lousy things
she had done
to me.
 
what a whore.
what a hunk of rock.
 
I sat there drinking
the whiskey
and wondering
what I was doing
with Nina.
 
then there was a
knock on the
door.
it was Nina's friend,
Helga.
 
"where's Nina?"
she asked.
 
"she tried to steal
my whiskey, I
ran her ass
out of here."
― 88 ―
 
"she said to meet
her here."
 
"what for?"
 
"she said me and her
were going to do it
in front of you
for $50."
 
"$25."
 
"she said $50."
 
"well, she's not
here ... want a
drink?"
 
"sure ..."
 
I got Helga a glass
poured her a
whiskey.
she took a
hit.
 
"maybe," she said,
"I ought to go get
Nina."
 
"I don't want to see
her."
 
"why not?"
 
"she's a whore."
 
― 89 ―
Helga finished her
drink and I poured
her another.
she took a
hit.
 
"Benny calls me a
whore, I'm no
whore."
 
Benny was the guy
she was shacked
with.
 
"I know you're no
whore, Helga."
 
"thanks. Ain't ya got no
music?"
 
"just the radio ..."
 
she saw it
got up
turned it
on.
some music came
blaring out.
 
Helga began to
dance
holding her whiskey
glass in one
hand.
she wasn't a good
dancer
she looked
ridiculous.
 
― 90 ―
she stopped
drained her drink
rolled her glass along the
rug
then ran toward
me
dropped to her knees
unzipped me
and then
she was down
there
doing tricks.
 
I drained my
drink
poured another.
 
she was
good.
she had a college
degree
some place back
East.
 
"get it, Helga, get
it!"
 
there was a loud
knock
on the front
door.
 
"HANK, IS HELGA
THERE?"
 
"WHO?"
 
"HELGA!"
 
"JUST A MINUTE!"
 
― 91 ―
"THIS IS NINA, I WAS
SUPPOSED TO MEET
HELGA HERE, WE HAVE A
LITTLE SURPRISE FOR
YOU!"
 
"YOU TRIED TO STEAL
MY WHISKEY, YOU
WHORE!"
 
"HANK, LET ME
IN!"
 
"get it, Helga, get
it!"
 
"HANK!"
 
"Helga, you fucking whore ...
Helga! Helga! Helga!!"
 
I pulled away and
got up.
 
"let her in."
 
I went to the
bathroom.
 
when I came out they
were both sitting there
drinking and smoking
laughing about
something.
then they
saw me.
 
"50 bucks," said Nina.
 
"25 bucks," I said.
― 92 ―
 
"we won't do it
then."
 
"don't then."
 
Nina inhaled
exhaled.
"all right, you
cheap bastard, 25
bucks!"
 
Nina stood up and
began taking her
clothes off.
 
she was the hardest
of them
all.
 
Helga stood up and
began taking her
clothes off.
 
I poured a
drink.
"sometimes I wonder
what the hell is
going on
around here," I
said.
 
"don't worry about
it, Daddy, just
get with it!"
 
"just what am I
supposed to
do?"
― 93 ―
 
"just do
whatever the fuck
you feel
like doing,"
said Nina
her big ass
blazing
in the
lamplight.
― 94 ―
poetry
 
it
takes
a lot of
 
desperation
 
dissatisfaction
 
and
disillusion
 
to
write
 
a
few
good
poems.
 
it's not
for
everybody
 
either to
 
write
it
 
or even to
 
read
it.
― 95 ―
dinner, 1933
 
when my father ate
his lips became
greasy
with food.
 
and when he ate
he talked about how
good
the food was
and that
most other people
didn't eat
as good
as we
did.
 
he liked to
sop up
what was left
on his plate
with a piece of
bread,
meanwhile making
appreciative sounds
rather like
half-
grunts.
 
― 96 ―
he slurped his
coffee
making loud
bubbling
sounds.
then he'd put
the cup
down:
"dessert? is it
jello?"
 
my mother would
bring it
in a large bowl
and my father would
spoon it
out.
 
as it plopped
in the dish
the jello made
strange sounds,
almost fart-
like
sounds.
 
then came the
whipped cream,
mounds of it
on the
jello.
 
"ah! jello and
whipped cream!"
 
my father sucked the
jello and whipped
cream
off his spoon—
it sounded as if it
was entering a
wind
tunnel.
 
― 97 ―
finished with
that
he would wipe his
mouth
with a huge white
napkin,
rubbing hard
in circular
motions,
the napkin almost
hiding his
entire
face.
 
after that
out came the
Camel
cigarettes.
he'd light one
with a wooden
kitchen match,
then place the
match,
still burning,
onto an
ashtray.
 
then a slurp of
coffee, the cup
back down, and a good
drag on the
Camel.
 
"ah that was a
good
meal!"
 
― 98 ―
moments later
in my bedroom
on my bed
in the dark
the food that I
had eaten
and what I had
seen
was already
making me
ill.
 
the only good
thing
was
listening to
the crickets
out there,
out there
in another world
I didn't
live
in.
― 99 ―
such luck
 
we were at this table,
men and women,
after dinner.
somehow
the conversation got
around to
PMS.
one of the ladies
stated firmly that
the only cure for
PMS
was old
age.
there were other
remarks
that I have
forgotten,
except for one
which came from this
German guest
once married,
now divorced.
also, I had seen
him with
any number of
beautiful young
girlfriends.
anyhow, after quietly
listening
to our conversation
for some time
he asked us,
"what's PMS?"
 
― 100 ―
now here was one
truly touched
by
the angels.
 
the light was so
bright
we
all looked
away.
― 101 ―
flophouse
 
you haven't lived
until you've been in a
flophouse
with nothing but one
light bulb
and 56 men
squeezed together
on cots
with everybody
snoring
at once
and some of those
snores
so
deep and
gross and
unbelievable—
dark
snotty
gross
subhuman
wheezings
from hell
itself.
 
your mind
almost breaks
under those
death-like
sounds
 
― 102 ―
and the
intermingling
odors:
hard
unwashed socks
pissed and
shitted
underwear
 
and over it all
slowly circulating
air
much like that
emanating from
uncovered
garbage
cans.
 
and those
bodies
in the dark
 
fat and
thin
and
bent
 
some
legless
armless
 
some
mindless
 
and worst of
all:
the total
absence of
hope
 
it shrouds
them
covers them
totally.
― 103 ―
 
it's not
bearable.
 
you get
up
 
go out
 
walk the
streets
 
up and
down
sidewalks
 
past buildings
 
around the
corner
 
and back
up
the same
street
 
thinking
 
those men
were all
children
once
 
what has happened
to
them?
 
and what has
happened
to
me?
― 104 ―
 
it's dark
and cold
out
here.
― 105 ―
hand-outs
 
sometimes I am hit
for change
3 or 4 times
in twenty minutes
and nine times out of
ten I'll
give.
the time or two
that I don't
I have an instinctive
reaction
not to
and I
don't
but mostly I
dig and
give
but each time
I can't help but
remember
the many times
hollow-eyed
my skin tight to the
ribs
my mind airy and
mad
I never asked
anybody
for anything
and it wasn't
pride
it was simply because
I didn't respect
them
didn't regard them
as worthy human
beings.
― 106 ―
they were the
enemy
and they still are
as I dig
in
and
give.
― 107 ―
waiting
 
hot summers in the mid-30's in Los Angeles
where every 3rd lot was vacant
and it was a short ride to the orange
groves—
if you had a car and the
gas.
 
hot summers in the mid-30's in Los Angeles
too young to be a man and too old to
be a boy.
 
hard times.
a neighbor tried to rob our
house, my father caught him
climbing through the
window,
held him there in the dark
on the floor:
"you rotten son of a
bitch!"
 
"Henry, Henry, let me go,
let me go!"
 
"you son of a bitch, I'll kill
you!"
 
my mother phoned the police.
 
another neighbor set his house on fire
in an attempt to collect the
insurance.
he was investigated and
jailed.
 
― 108 ―
hot summers in the mid-30's in Los Angeles,
nothing to do, nowhere to go, listening to
the terrified talk of our parents
at night:
"what will we do? what will we
do?"
 
"god, I don't know ..."
 
starving dogs in the alleys, skin taut
across ribs, hair falling out, tongues
out, such sad eyes, sadder than any sadness
on earth.
 
hot summers in the mid-30's in Los Angeles,
the men of the neighborhood were quiet
and the women were like pale
statues.
 
the parks full of socialists,
communists, anarchists, standing on the park
benches, orating, agitating.
 
the sun came down through a clear sky and
the ocean was clean
and we were
neither men nor
boys.
 
we fed the dogs leftover pieces of dry hard
bread
which they ate gratefully,
eyes shining in
wonder,
tails waving at such
luck
 
as
World War II moved toward us,
even then, during those
hot summers in the mid-30's in Los Angeles.
― 109 ―
those mornings
 
I still remember those New Orleans rats
out on the balcony railings
in the dark of early morning
as I stood waiting my turn at the
crapper.
there were always two or three
big ones
just sitting there—sometimes they'd
move quickly then
stop and sit there.
I looked at them and they looked at
me.
they showed no fear.
 
at last the crapper door would open
and out would walk
one of the tenants
and he always looked worse than
the rats
and then he'd be gone
down the hallway
and I'd go into the still-
stinking crapper
with my hangover.
 
and almost always
when I came out
the rats would be gone.
as soon as it got a little light
they would
vanish.
 
― 110 ―
and then
the world would be
mine,
I'd walk down the stairway
and into it
and my low-wage
pitiful
job
while remembering the
rats,
how it was better for them
than for
me.
 
I walked to work as the sun
came up hot
and the whores slept
like
babies.
― 111 ―
everything you touch
 
putting on your torn clothes in an old New Orleans roominghouse,
you and your stockboy soul,
then rolling your little green wagon past the salesgirls who
took no notice of you, those girls dreaming of bigger
game with their tiny rectangular
brains.
 
or in Los Angeles, coming in from your shipping clerk job at
an auto parts warehouse, taking the elevator up to 319 to find
your woman sprawled out on the bed, drunk at
6 p.m.
 
you were never any good at picking them, you always got the
leftovers, the crazies, the alkies, the pill-freaks.
maybe that was all you could get and maybe you were all they
could get.
 
you went to the bars and found more alkies, pill-freaks, crazies.
all they had to show you were a pair of well-turned ankles in
spike-heeled shoes.
you thumped up and down on beds with them as if you had
discovered
the meaning of
existence.
 
then there was this day at work when Larry the salesman came
down the
aisle with his big belly and his little button eyes, Larry always
walked loudly on leather-soled shoes and he was almost always
whistling.
 
he stopped whistling and stood at your shipping table as you
worked.
 
― 112 ―
then he began rocking back and forth, he had this habit and
he stood there rocking, observing you, he was one of those jokers,
you
know, and then he began laughing, you were sick from a long crazy
night, needed a shave, you were dressed in a torn shirt.
 
"what is it, Larry?" you asked.
 
and then he said, "Hank, everything you touch turns to shit!"
 
you couldn't argue with him about that.
― 113 ―
car wash
 
got out, fellow said, "hey!" walked toward
me, we shook hands, he slipped me 2 red
tickets for free car washes, "find you later,"
I told him, walked on through to waiting
area with wife, we sat on outside bench.
black fellow with a limp came up, said,
"hey, man, how's it going?"
I answered, "fine, bro, you makin' it?"
"no problem," he said, then walked off to
dry down a Caddy.
"these people know you?" my wife asked.
"no."
"how come they talk to you?"
"they like me, people have always liked me,
it's my cross."
then our car was finished, fellow flipped
his rag at me, we got up, got to the
car, I slipped him a buck, we got in, I
started the engine, the foreman walked
up, big guy with dark shades, huge guy,
he smiled a big one, "good to see you,
man!"
I smiled back, "thanks, but it's your party,
man!"
I pulled out into traffic, "they know you,"
said my wife.
"sure," I said, "I've been there."
― 114 ―
the flashing of the odds
 
parking lot attendant, Bobby, was funny,
wise-cracking, laughing, was
good at it, he was an original,
sometimes when I was down
listening to Bobby brought me back
up.
 
didn't see him for 3 weeks, asked the
other attendants but they didn't know
or made things up.
 
drove in today and there was
Bobby, his uniform wrinkled, he was just
standing there while the others
worked.
 
approached him and he seemed to
recognize me, then spoke: "got all
stressed out driving here, it took me
3 hours!"
 
he wasn't laughing, had grown suddenly
fat, his belt buckle was
unfastened, I buckled him up, he
had a 3 day beard,
his
hair was grey, his face wrinkled, his
eyes stuck in a backwash, 20 years
lost in 3 weeks.
 
"good to see you, Bobby."
 
"yeah, sure, when you going to buy
this place?"
 
he was talking about the
racetrack.
― 115 ―
 
I walked across the lot and into
the track, took the escalator
up, reached the top floor, walked
toward the service stand.
Betty saw me and got my coffee
poured.
 
"you ready for a big day?"
she asked.
 
"I'm ready for any kind of
day."
 
"you come here to win, don't
you?"
 
"I come here not to
lose."
 
I took my coffee to a seat
facing the toteboard.
the odds flashed, I sat down
spilling hot coffee
on my
hand.
 
"shit," I said.
 
and the day went
on.
― 116 ―
poetry contest
 
send as many poems as you wish, only
keep each to a maximum of ten lines.
no limit as to style or content
although we prefer poems of
affirmation.
double space
with your name and address in the
upper left hand
corner.
editors not responsible for
manuscripts
without an s.a.s.e.
every effort
will be made to
judge all works within 90
days.
after careful screening
the final choices will be made by
Elly May Moody,
general editor in charge.
please enclose ten dollars for
each poem
submitted.
a final grand prize of
seventy-five dollars will
be awarded the winner
of the
Elly May Moody Golden Poetry 
Award ,
along with a scroll
signed by
Elly May Moody.
there will also be 2nd, 3rd and
4th prize scrolls
also signed by
Elly May Moody.
all decisions will be
― 117 ―
final.
the prize winners will
appear in the Spring issue of
The Heart of Heaven .
prize winners will also receive
one copy of the magazine
along with
Elly May Moody's
latest collection of
poetry,
The Place Where Winter 
Died . 

Language:

To highlight particular lines, prefix each line with @@

1

my wrists are rivers 
my fingers are words 

― 15 ―
jam

that Harbor Freeway south through the downtown
area—I mean, it can simply become
unbelievable .

last Friday evening I was sitting there
motionless behind a wall of red taillights,
there wasn't even first gear movement
as masses of exhaust fumes
greyed the evening air, engines over-
heated
and there was the smell of a clutch
burning out
somewhere—
it seemed to come from ahead of me—
from that long slow rise of freeway where
the cars were working
from first gear to neutral
again and again
and from neutral back to
first gear.

on the radio I heard the news
of that day
at least 6 times, I was
well versed in world
affairs.
the remainder of the stations played a
thin, sick music.
the classical stations refused to come in
clearly
and when they did
it was a stale repetition of standard and
tiresome works.

― 16 ―
I turned the radio off.
a strange whirling began in my
head—it circled behind the forehead, clock-
wise, went past the ears and around to the
back of the head, then back to the forehead
and around
again.
I began to wonder, is this what happens
when one goes
mad?

I considered getting out of my car.
I was in the so-called fast
lane.
I could see myself out there
out of my car
leaning against the freeway divider,
arms folded.
then I would slide down to a sitting
position, putting my head between
my legs.

I stayed in the car, bit my tongue, turned
the radio back on, willed the whirling to
stop
as I wondered if any of the others had to
battled against their
compulsions
as I did?

then the car ahead of me
MOVED
a foot, 2 feet, 3 feet!

I shifted to first gear ...
there was MOVEMENT!
then I was back in neutral
BUT
we had moved from 7 to
ten feet.

― 17 ―
hearing the world news for the
7th time,
it was still all bad
but all of us listening,
we could handle that too
because we knew
that there was nothing worse than
looking at
that same license plate
that same dumb head sticking up
from behind the headrest
in the car ahead of you
as time dissolved
as the temperature gauge leaned
more to the right
as the gas gauge leaned
more to the left
as we wondered
whose clutch was burning
out?

we were like some last, vast
final dinosaur
crawling feebly home somewhere,
somehow, maybe
to
die.
― 18 ―
two toughs

at L.A. City College there were two toughs, me and Jed
Anderson.
Anderson was one of the best running backs in the
history of the school, a real breakaway threat
anytime he got the football.
I was pretty tough physically but looked at sports
as a game for freaks.
I thought a bigger game was challenging those
who attempted to teach
us.

anyhow, Jed and I were the two biggest lights on
campus, he piled up his 60, 70 and 80 yard
runs in the night games
and during the days
slouched in my seat
I made up what I didn't know
and what I did know
was so bad
many a teacher was made to
dance to it.

and one grand day
Jed and I
finally met.
it was at a little jukebox place
across from campus and
he was sitting with his
pals
and I was sitting with
mine.

― 19 ―
"go on! go on! talk to him!"
my pals
urged.
I said, "fuck that gym
boy. I am one with
Nietzsche, let him come
over here!"

finally Jed got up to get a
pack of smokes from the
machine and one of my
friends asked,
"are you afraid of that
man?"

I got up and walked behind
Jed as he was reaching into the
machine
for his pack.

"hello, Jed," I
said.

he turned: "hello,
Hank."

then he reached into his
rear pocket,
pulled out a pint of
whiskey, handed it to
me.

I took a mighty hit,
handed it
back.

"Jed, what are you
going to do
after
L.A.C.C.?"

"I'm going to play
for Notre Dame."
― 20 ―

then he walked back
to his table
and I walked back
to mine.

"what'd he say? what'd
he say?"

"nothing much."

anyhow, Jed never made it
to Notre Dame
and I never made it
anywhere
either—
the years just swept us
away
but there were others
who went
on, including one fellow
who became a famous
sports columnist
and I had to look at his
photo
for decades
in the newspaper
as I inherited those
cheap rooms
and those roaches
and those airless
dreary
nights.

― 21 ―
but
I was still proud of that moment
back then
when Jed handed me
that pint
and
I drained
a third of it
with all the disciples
watching.
damn, there was no way
it seemed
we could ever
lose
but we did.

and it took me
3 or 4 decades to
move on just a
little.
and Jed,
if you are still here
tonight,
(I forgot to tell you
then)
here's a thanks
for that drink.
― 22 ―
my German buddy

tonight
drinking Singha
malt liquor from
Thailand
and listening to
Wagner

I can't believe that
he is not in
the other
room
or around the
corner
or alive
someplace
tonight

and he is
of course
as I am taken
by the sound of
him

and little goosebumps
run along
both of my
arms

then a
chill

he's here

now.
― 23 ―
happy birthday

when Wagner was an
old man
a birthday party was given
in his
honor
and a couple of
youthful
incidental compositions
were played.

afterwards
he asked,
"who wrote those?"

"you did," he was
told.

"ah," he responded,
"it's as I have always
suspected: death
then
does have some
virtue."
― 24 ―
the telephone

will bring you people
with its ring,
people who do not know what to do with
their time
and they will ache to
infect you with
this
from a distance
(although they would prefer
to actually be in the same room
to better project their nullity upon
you).

the telephone is needed for
emergency purposes only.

these people are not
emergencies, they are
calamities.

I have never welcomed the ring of a
telephone.

"hello," I will answer
guardedly.

"this is Dwight."

already you can feel their imbecile
yearning to invade.
they are the people-fleas that
crawl the
psyche.

"yes, what is it?"
― 25 ―

"well, I'm in town tonight and
I thought ..."

"listen, Dwight, I'm tied up, I
can't ..."

"well, maybe another
time?"

"maybe not ..."

each person is only given so many
evenings
and each wasted evening is
a gross violation against the
natural course of
your only
life;
besides, it leaves an aftertaste
which often lasts two or three days
depending upon the
visitor.

the telephone is only for
emergency purposes.

it has taken me
decades
but I have finally found out
how to say
"no."

now
don't be concerned for them,
please:
they will simply dial another
number.

it could be
yours.
― 26 ―

"hello," you will
say.

and they will say,
"this is Dwight."

and then
you
be
the kind
understanding
soul.
― 27 ―
begging

like most of you, I've had so many jobs that
I feel as if I were gutted and my insides
thrown to the winds.
I've met some good people along the
way and also the
other kind.
yet when I think of all those
I have worked with—
even though decades have passed—
Karl
comes to mind
first.

I remember Karl: our jobs required we
both wear aprons
tied from behind and around
the neck with string.

I was Karl's underling.
"we got an easy job," he
told me.

each day as one by one our superiors arrived
Karl would make a slight bend at the waist,
smile, and with a nod of the head
greet each: "good morning Dr. Stein,"
or, "good morning Mr. Day" or
Mrs. Knight or if the lady was unattached
"good morning, Lilly" or Betty or Fran.

I never
spoke.

― 28 ―
Karl seemed concerned at this and
one day he took me aside: "hey,
where the fuck else you going to get a
two hour lunch like we
do?"

"nowhere, I guess ..."

"well, o.k., look, for guys like you and me,
this is as good as it can get, this is all
there is."

I waited.

"so look, it's hard to suck up to them at first, it
didn't come easy for me
but after a while I realized that it
didn't matter.
I just grew a shell.
now I've got my shell, got
it?"

I looked at him and sure enough he did look like he had
a shell, there was a mask-like look to his
face and the eyes were null, void and
undisturbed; I was looking at a weathered and
beaten conch.


some weeks went by.
nothing changed: Karl bowed and scraped and smiled
undaunted, perfect in his
role.
that we were perishable , perhaps didn't occur to
him
or
that greater gods might be
watching.

I did my
work.
― 29 ―

then, one day, Karl took me
aside again.

"listen, Dr. Morely spoke to me
about you."

"yes?"

"he asked me what was wrong with
you."

"what did you tell
him?"

"I told him that you were
young."

"thanks."

upon receiving my next check, I
quit

but

still
had to
eventually settle for another similar
job
and
viewing the
new Karls
I finally forgave them all
but not myself:

― 30 ―
being perishable sometimes makes a
man
strange
almost
unemployable
most
obnoxious—
no servant of
free
enterprise.
― 31 ―
the feel of it

A. Huxley died at 69,
much too early for such a
fierce talent,
and I read all his
works
but actually
Point Counter Point
did help a bit
in carrying me through
the factories and the
drunk tanks and the
unsavory
ladies.
that
book
along with Hamsun's
Hunger
they helped a
bit.
great books are
the ones we
need.

― 32 ―
I was astonished at
myself for liking the
Huxley book
but it did come from
such a rabid
beautiful
pessimistic
intellectualism,
and when I first
read P.C.P.
I was living in a
hotel room
with a wild and
crazy
alcoholic woman
who once threw
Pound's Cantos
at me
and missed,
as they did
with me.

I was working
as a packer
in a light fixture
plant
and once
during a drinking
bout
I told the lady,
"here, read this!"
(referring to
Point Counter
Point .)

"ah, jam it up
your ass!" she
screamed at
me.

anyhow, 69 seemed
too early for Aldous
Huxley to
die.
but I guess it's
just as fair
as the death of a
scrubwoman
at the same
age.

― 33 ―
it's just that
with those who
help us
get on through,
then
all that light
dying, it works the
gut a bit—
scrubwomen, cab drivers,
cops, nurses, bank
robbers, priests,
fishermen, fry cooks,
jockeys and the
like
be
damned.
― 34 ―
the greatest actor of our day

he's getting fatter and fatter,
almost bald
he has a wisp of hair
in the back
which he twists
and holds
with a rubber band.

he's got a place in the hills
and he's got a place in the
islands
and few people ever see
him.
some consider him the greatest
actor of our
day.

he has few friends, a
very few.
with them, his favorite
pastime is
eating.

at rare times he is reached
by telephone
usually
with an offer to act
in an exceptional (he's
told)
motion picture.

he answers in a very soft
voice:

"oh, no, I don't want to
make any more movies ..."
― 35 ―

"can we send you the
screenplay?"

"all right ..."

then
he's not heard from
again.

usually
what he and his few friends
do
after eating
(if the night is cold)
is to have a few drinks
and watch the screenplays
burn
in the fireplace.

― 36 ―
or
after eating (on
warm evenings)
after a few
drinks
the screenplays
are taken
frozen
out of cold
storage.
he hands some
to his friends
keeps some
then
together
from the veranda
they toss them
like flying saucers
far out
into the spacious
canyon
below.

then
they all go
back in
knowing
instinctively
that the screenplays
were
bad. (at least,
he senses it and
they
accept
that.)

it's a real good
world
up there:
well-earned, self-
sufficient
and
hardly
dependent
upon the
variables.

there's
all that time
to eat
drink
and
wait on death
like
everybody
else.
― 37 ―
days like razors, nights full of rats

as a very young man I divided an equal amount of time between
the bars and the libraries; how I managed to provide for
my other ordinary needs is the puzzle; well, I simply didn't
bother too much with that—
if I had a book or a drink then I didn't think too much of
other things—fools create their own
paradise.

in the bars, I thought I was a tough, I broke things, fought
other men, etc.

in the libraries it was another matter: I was quiet, went
from room to room, didn't so much read entire books
as parts of them: medicine, geology, literature and
philosophy. psychology, math, history, other things, put me
off. with music I was more interested in the music and in the
lives of the composers than in the technical aspects ...

however, it was with the philosophers that I felt a brotherhood:
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, even old hard-to-read Kant;
I found Santayana, who was very popular at the time, to be
limp and a bore; Hegel you really had to dig for, especially
with a hangover; there are many I read who I have forgotten,
perhaps properly so, but I remember one fellow who wrote an
entire book in which he proved that the moon was not there
and he did it so well that afterwards you thought, he's
absolutely right, the moon is not there.

how the hell is a young man going to deign to work an
8 hour day when the moon isn't even there?
what else
might be missing?

― 38 ―
and
I didn't like literature so much as I did the literary
critics; they were real pricks, those guys; they used
fine language, beautiful in its way, to call other
critics, other writers, assholes. they
perked me up.

but it was the philosophers who satisfied
that need
that lurked somewhere within my confused skull: wading
through their excesses and their
clotted vocabulary
they still often
stunned
leaped out
with a flaming gambling statement that appeared to be
absolute truth or damned near
absolute truth,
and this certainty was what I was searching for in a daily
life that seemed more like a piece of
cardboard.

what great fellows those old dogs were, they got me past
days like razors and nights full of rats; and women
bargaining like auctioneers from hell.

my brothers, the philosophers, they spoke to me unlike
anybody on the streets or anywhere else; they
filled an immense void.
such good boys, ah, such good
boys!

yes, the libraries helped; in my other temple, the
bars, it was another matter, more simplistic, the
language and the way was
different ...

― 39 ―
library days, bar nights.
the nights were alike,
there's some fellow sitting nearby, maybe not a
bad sort, but for me he doesn't shine right,
there's a gruesome deadness there—I think of my father,
of schoolteachers, of faces on coins and bills, of dreams
about murderers with dull eyes; well,
somehow this fellow and I get to exchanging glances,
a fury slowly begins to gather: we are enemies, cat and
dog, priest and atheist, fire and water; tension builds,
block piled upon block, waiting for the crash; our hands
fold and unfold, we drink, now, finally with a
purpose:

his face turns to me:
"sumpin' ya don't like, buddy?"

"yeah. you."

"wanna do sumpin' about it?"

"certainly."

we finish our drinks, rise, move to the back of the
bar, out into the alley; we
turn, face each other.

I say to him, "there's nothing but space between us. you
care to close that
space?"

he rushes toward me and somehow it's a part of the part of the
part.
― 40 ―
in and out of the dark

my wife likes movie houses, the popcorn and soft drinks, the
settling into seats, she finds a child's delight in
this and I am happy for her—but really, I myself, I must have
come from another place, I must have been a mole in another
life, something that burrowed and hid alone:
the other people crowded in the seats, near and far, give me
feelings that I dislike; it's stupid, maybe, but there it
is; and then
there's the darkness and then the
giant human faces, bodies, that move about on the screen, they
speak and we
listen.

of one hundred movies there's one that's fair, one that's good
and ninety eight that are very bad.
most movies start badly and steadily get
worse;
if you can believe the actions and speech of the
characters
you might even believe that the popcorn you chew also
has a meaning of
sorts.
(well, it might be that people see so many movies
that when they finally see one not
so bad as the others, they think it's
great. an Academy Award means that you don't stink
quite as much as your cousin.)

the movie ends and we are out in the street, moving
toward the car; "well," says my wife, "it wasn't as
good as they say."
"no," I say, "it wasn't."

"there were a few good parts, though," she replies.
"yeah," I answer.
― 41 ―

we are at the car, get in, then I am driving us out
of that part of town; we look around at the night;
the night looks good.

"you hungry?" she asks.

"yes. you?"

we stop at a signal; I watch the red light;
I could eat that red light—anything, anything at
all to fill the void; millions of dollars spent to create
something more terrible than the actual lives of
most living things; one should never have to pay an
admission to hell.

the light changes and we escape,
forward.
― 42 ―
be kind

we are always asked
to understand the other person's
viewpoint
no matter how
out-dated
foolish or
obnoxious.

one is asked
to view
their total error
their life-waste
with
kindliness,
especially if they are
aged.

but age is the total of
our doing.
they have aged
badly
because they have
lived
out of focus,
they have refused to
see.

not their fault?

whose fault?
mine?

― 43 ―
I am asked to hide
my viewpoint
from them
for fear of their
fear.

age is no crime

but the shame
of a deliberately
wasted
life

among so many
deliberately
wasted
lives

is.
― 44 ―
the man with the beautiful eyes

when we were kids
there was a strange house
all the shades were
always
drawn
and we never heard voices
in there
and the yard was full of
bamboo
and we liked to play in
the bamboo
pretend we were
Tarzan
(although there was no
Jane).
and there was a
fish pond
a large one
full of the
fattest goldfish
you ever saw
and they were
tame.
they came to the
surface of the water
and took pieces of
bread
from our hands.

our parents had
told us:
"never go near that
house."
so, of course,
we went.
― 45 ―

we wondered if anybody
lived there.
weeks went by and we
never saw
anybody.

then one day
we heard
a voice
from the house
"YOU GOD DAMNED
WHORE!"

it was a man's
voice.

then the screen
door
of the house was
flung open
and the man
walked
out.

― 46 ―
he was holding a
fifth of whiskey
in his right
hand.
he was about
30.
he had a cigar
in his
mouth,
needed a
shave.
his hair was
wild and
uncombed
and he was
barefoot
in undershirt
and pants.
but his eyes
were
bright.
they blazed
with
brightness
and he said,
"hey, little
gentlemen,
having a good
time, I
hope?"

then he gave a
little laugh
and walked
back into the
house.

we left,
went back to my
parents' yard
and thought
about it.

― 47 ―
our parents,
we decided,
had wanted us
to stay away
from there
because they
never wanted us
to see a man
like
that,
a strong natural
man
with
beautiful
eyes.

our parents
were ashamed
that they were
not
like that
man,
that's why they
wanted us
to stay
away.

but
we went back
to that house
and the bamboo
and the tame
goldfish.
we went back
many times
for many
weeks
but we never
saw
or heard
the man
again.

the shades were
down
as always
and it was
quiet.

― 48 ―
then one day
as we came back from
school
we saw the
house.

it had burned
down,
there was nothing
left,
just a smoldering
twisted black
foundation
and we went to
the fish pond
and there was
no water
in it
and the fat
orange goldfish
were dead
there,
drying out.

we went back to
my parents' yard
and talked about
it
and decided that
our parents had
burned their
house down,
had killed
them
had killed the
goldfish
because it was
all too
beautiful,
even the bamboo
forest had
burned.
― 49 ―

they had been
afraid of
the man with the
beautiful
eyes.

and
we were afraid
then
that
all throughout our lives
things like that
would
happen,
that nobody
wanted
anybody
to be
strong and
beautiful
like that,
that
others would never
allow it,
and that
many people
would have to
die.
― 50 ―
a strange day

it was one of those hot and tiring days at Hollywood
Park
with a huge crowd, a
tiring, rude, dumb
crowd.

I won the last race and stayed to collect and when I
got to my car
there was a massive jam of traffic attempting to
work its way out of there.

so I took my shoes off, sat and waited, turned on the
radio, lucked onto some classical music, found
a pint of Scotch in the glove compartment, un-
capped it, had a
hit.

I'm going to let them all get out of here, I
thought, then I'll
go.

I found ¾'s of a cigar, lit it, had another hit
of Scotch.

I listened to the music, smoked, drank the
Scotch and watched the losers
leave.

there was even a little crap game going
about 100 yards to the
east

then that
broke up.

I decided to finish the
pint.
― 51 ―

I did, then stretched out on the
seat.

I don't know how long I
slept
but when I awakened it was dark and
the parking lot was
empty.

I decided not to put on my shoes, started the car
and drove out of
there....

when I got back to my place I could hear the phone
ringing.

as I put the key in the door and opened it,
the phone kept
ringing.

I walked over, picked up the
phone.

"hello?"

"you son of a bitch, where have you
been?"

"the racetrack."

"the racetrack? it's 12:30 a.m.! I've been
phoning since
7 p.m.!"

"I just got in from the
racetrack."
― 52 ―

"you got some woman
there?"

"no."

"I don't believe you!"
she hung up.

I walked to the refrigerator, got a beer, went to
the bathroom, let the water run in the
tub.
I finished the beer, got another, opened it and
climbed into the
tub.

the phone rang
again.

I got out of the tub with my beer and
dripping away
I walked to the phone, picked it
up.

"hello?"

"you son of a bitch, I still don't
believe you!"

she hung up.

I walked back to the tub with my beer,
leaving another trail of
water.

as I got back into the tub
the phone rang
again.

― 53 ―
I let it ring, counting the
rings: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,
10,11,12,13,14,15,
16 ...

she hung up.

then, perhaps, 3 or 4 minutes
passed.

the phone rang
again.

I counted the rings:
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,
9 ...

then it was
quiet.

about then I remembered I had
left my shoes in the
car.
no matter, except I only had
one pair.

chances were, though, that nobody
would ever want to steal that
car.

I got out of the tub for another
beer,
leaving another trail
behind me.

it was the end of a
long
long
day.
― 54 ―
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.
― 55 ―

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 new-found
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."

― 56 ―
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.

― 57 ―
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.
― 58 ―
air and light and time and space

"—you know, I've either had a family, a job, something
has always been in the
way
but now
I've sold my house, I've found this
place, a large studio, you should see the space and
the light .
for the first time in my life I'm going to have a place and the time to
create ."

no baby, if you're going to create
you're going to create whether you work
16 hours a day in a coal mine
or
you're going to create in a small room with 3 children
while you're on
welfare,
you're going to create with part of your mind and your
body blown
away,
you're going to create blind
crippled
demented,
you're going to create with a cat crawling up your
back while
the whole city trembles in earthquake, bombardment,
flood and fire.

baby, air and light and time and space
have nothing to do with it
and don't create anything
except maybe a longer life to find
new excuses
for.
― 59 ―
the eagle of the heart—

what will they be writing about 2,000 years from
now
if they are
here?

now
I drink cabernet sauvignon while
listening to
Bach: it's
most curious: this
continuing death
this
continuing life

as
I look at this hand
holding a cigarette
I feel as if
I have been here
forever.

now
troops with bayonets
sack
the town below.
my dog, Tony, smiles at
me.

― 60 ―
it is well
to feel good
for no reason;
or
with a limited
choice to
choose
anyhow;
or with a little love,
not to buckle to
hatred.
faith, brother, not in the
gods
but in
yourself:
don't ask,
tell.

I tell you
such fine
music
waits
in the
shadows
of
hell.
― 61 ―
bright red car

I try to avoid speed duels on the freeway but the most curious thing
is
that all my speeding tickets are when I am quietly driving along on
my
own.

when I am in a high speed duel, darting in and out of lanes
at near 100 m.p.h.
the police are never
about.

when I get tagged for speeding it is for cruising along,
day-dreaming, at a mere 70
m.p.h.

I received 3 such nonsensical tickets in 3 weeks so
I laid low for some time—2 years, in fact, but today
out there
there was a fellow in a bright red car, I have no idea what
model or kind
and I have no idea of how it all started but I believe that
I started it:
I was in the fast lane going about 70
and I caught the flash of bright red in my rear view and
as he swung out to pass me on the right
he was doing 75
and there was time for him to pass
then cut into the fast lane ahead of me
but something made me hit the throttle and cut him
off
locking him in behind an old lady with a CHRIST
SAVES bumper sticker.
this seemed to piss him no end
and next I knew he had swung over on my bumper,
so close that his windshield and my taillights
seemed one.
― 62 ―

this pissed me no end and I was being blocked by a
green Volks directly ahead
but I cut right through an opening and shot
ahead.
bright red went wild, spotted the far lane open,
roared over and gunned it
along.

after that, it was just me and bright red
jockeying for spots.

he would garner a lead, then with a crazy gamble
of lane change I would regain the
lead.

during this duel my destination was forgotten and I'm
sure his was
too.

watching him, I couldn't help but admire his driving
skill; he took a few more chances than I
but I had a little bit the better machine
so it
just about evened out.

then
suddenly
we were alone: a freak break in the traffic
had set us free together
and we really opened
up.

he had a short lead but my machine slowly gained; I
inched up near him,
then I was at his side and I couldn't help but
look over.

he was a young Japanese-American, maybe 18, 19
and I looked at him and
laughed.
― 63 ―

I saw him check me out.
he saw a 70 year old white man
with a face like
Frankenstein.

the young man took his foot off the throttle and
dropped back.

I let him go.

I turned the radio
on.

I was 18 miles past my destination but it
didn't matter.

it was a beautiful sunny day.
― 64 ―
moving toward the 21st century

it was a New Year's Eve party at my place
I think.
I was standing holding a drink when
this slender young fellow walked up
he was a bit drunk he said

"Hank, I met a woman who said
she was married to you for 2
years."

"really?
what was her
name?"

"Lola
Edwards."

"never heard of
her."

"ah, come on, man, she
said ..."

"don't know her,
baby ..."

in fact I didn't know who
he was ...

I drained my drink walked to the kitchen
poured a refill

I looked around yes, I was at my place
I recognized the
kitchen.
― 65 ―

another
Happy New Year.

Jesus.

I walked out to face the
people.
― 66 ―
the lady and the mountain lion

it was hardly a wilderness area
but it was countryside
and there had been a paucity of
rainfall—also some housing
construction on the
hillsides.

small game was dying
out.
the coyotes were the first of
the famished to
arrive
looking for
chickens
cats
anything.

in fact, a group attacked
a man on horseback
tearing his arm
but he
escaped.

then
in a park
there was the lady who
left her car to
go to the public
restroom.

― 67 ―
she had closed the stall
door
when she heard a
soft
sound,
the stealth of
padded
feet.

then
as she sat there
the mountain lion stuck
his head under the
stall door.

a truly beautiful
animal.

then
the head withdrew, the cat
knocked over a trash can, circled,
emitted a slow
growl.

the lady climbed up
on the toilet
then grasped an overhead
pipe
and
swung herself completely up
(fear creates abnormal
acts) and sat where
she could watch
the cat.

at once
the cat put his
paws up
on the wash basin
stuck his head in
there
and lapped at a dripping
spigot.

― 68 ―
then
he sank
low upon the floor
crouched
facing the doorway

then
zing
was gone
out of there.

then
at last
the lady began
screaming.

when the people
arrived
the cat was nowhere to be
seen.

the story made the
newspapers and the television
stations.

the story that won't be told is
that the lady
will never go to the bathroom
again
without thinking of a
mountain
lion.

a truly beautiful
animal.
― 69 ―
a laugh a minute

come on, let's go see him, this old guy is a
kick in the ass, 50 years old, he sits around
in his shorts and underwear
drinking wine out of this chipped white
cup.
he sits with the shades pulled down and
he's never owned a tv set.
the only time he goes out is for more
wine
or to the racetrack in his baby blue
'58 Comet.

you get there and he's distraught, some woman
has always left forever and
he pretends to play it with bravado but
his little slit eyes are filled with
pain.

he'll pour drinks all around, he just gulps
that crap down and then sometimes he'll
get up and puke.
it's really something. you
can hear him for blocks.
then he'll come out and pour another
drink.
he'll go on and on drinking
and then once in a while he'll say something
crazy like, "anything 3 dogs can do, 4 dogs
can do better!"
other things too.
or he'll smash a glass or a bottle against
the wall.

― 70 ―
he worked as an orderly in a
hospital for 15 years
then quit.
he never sleeps at night.

and for a guy that ugly
I don't see how he gets all his
women.
and he's jealous.
just look at one of his women
and he'll swing on you.

then he gets drunk and tells crazy
stories and sings.
and guess what? he writes
poetry.

come on, let's go see him, this old guy
is a kick in the
ass!
― 71 ―
hello, Hamsun

after two-and-one-half bottles
that have not strengthened my saddened
heart

walking from this drunken
darkness
toward the bedroom
thinking of Hamsun who
ate his own flesh to
gain time to
write

I trundle into the other
room
an old
man

a hellfish in the night
swimming upward
sideways
down.
― 72 ―
death is smoking my cigars

you know: I'm drunk once again
here
listening to Tchaikovsky
on the radio.
Jesus, I heard him 47 years
ago
when I was a starving writer
and here he is
again
and now I am a minor success as
a writer
and death is walking
up and down
this room
smoking my cigars
taking hits of my
wine
as Tchaik is working away
at the Pathétique ,
it's been some journey
and any luck I've had was
because I rolled the dice
right:
I starved for my art, I starved to
gain 5 god-damned minutes, 5 hours,
5 days—
I just wanted to get the word
down;
fame, money, didn't matter:
I wanted the word down
and they wanted me at a punch press,
a factory assembly line
they wanted me to be a stock boy in a
department store.

― 73 ―
well, death says, as he walks by,
I'm going to get you anyhow
no matter what you've been:
writer, cab-driver, pimp, butcher,
sky-diver, I'm going to get
you ...

o.k. baby, I tell him.

we drink together now
as one a.m. slides to 2
a.m. and
only he knows the
moment, but I worked a con
on him: I got my
5 god-damned minutes
and much
more.
― 74 ―
hock shops

were always all right with me
because when I tried to sell something in the street
there were no takers.

of course, the shops offered far less than real value;
they had to profit on the
resale,
but at least, they were
there.

my favorite shop was a place in Los Angeles—
this fellow would lead me to a booth where
he would gather a black curtain all around
us,
it slid on little rings
and then
we would be enclosed.

and it always went like
this:

"show me," he would
say.

I would place the item on the table under
the very strong
light.

he would examine the item, then look at me
for some time.

"I can't give you very much for
this."

another pause, then he would name his
price.
― 75 ―

the offer was always more than I
expected.

"I'll take $10," I would name a
higher price.

"no," he would answer, "in fact ..."
and then he would mention a lower price
than his original
offer.

at times I would attempt to joke with
him:

"if I stay here long enough, I'll be
paying you ..."

he wouldn't smile.

"we don't have to do business at
all."

"listen, I'll accept your first
offer ..."

"very well," he would say,
"but I will lose on
this ..."

then he would write out the
pawn ticket and give me the
money.

"please be sure to read your ticket,
there are
stipulations."

then he would turn off the light
and pull the black curtain
away ...
― 76 ―

sometimes I was able to retrieve one
of the items
but eventually they all returned
forever.

also, I found out that the one thing
you could sell in the bars and on the
street were
hock shop tickets.

the hock shops helped me through some terrible
times and I was glad they were
there when nothing else
was, and that booth with the black
curtain: what a marvelous sanctuary,
a place to give up something for
something else that you needed
much more.

how many typewriters, suits, gloves and
watches I left in the hock shops
I have no
idea,
but those places were always
all right
with me.
― 77 ―
hell is a closed door

even when starving
the rejection slips hardly ever bothered me:
I only believed that the editors were
truly stupid
and I just went on and wrote more and
more.
I even considered rejects as
action ; the worst was the empty
mailbox.

if I had a weakness or a dream
it was
that I only wanted to see one of these
editors
who rejected me,
to see his or her face, the way they
dressed, the way they walked across a
room, the sound of their voice, the look
in their eye ...
just one look at one of
them—

you see, when all you look at is
a piece of printed paper
telling you that you
aren't very good,
then there is a tendency
to think that the editors
are more god-like than
they are.

hell is a closed door
when you're starving for your god-
damned art
but sometimes you feel at least like having a
peek through the
keyhole.
― 78 ―

young or old, good or bad,
I don't think anything dies as slow and
as hard as a
writer.
― 79 ―
pulled down shade

what I like about you
she told me
is that you're crude—
look at you sitting there
a beercan in your hand
and a cigar in your mouth
and look at
your dirty hairy belly
sticking out from
under your shirt.
you've got your shoes off
and you've got a hole
in your right stocking
with the big toe
sticking out.
you haven't shaved in
4 or 5 days.
your teeth are yellow
and your eyebrows
hang down
all twisted
and you've got enough
scars
to scare the shit
out of anybody.
there's always
a ring
in your bathtub
your telephone
is covered with
grease
and
half the crap in
your refrigerator is
rotten.
you never
wash your car.
― 80 ―
you've got newspapers
a week old
on the floor.
you read dirty
magazines
and you don't have
a tv
but you order
deliveries from the
liquor store
and you tip
good.
and best of all
you don't push
a woman to
go to bed
with you.
you seem hardly
interested
and when I talk to you
you don't
say anything
you just
look around
the room or
scratch your
neck
like you don't
hear me.
you've got an old
wet towel in
the sink
and a photo of
Mussolini
on the wall
and you never
complain
about anything
and you never
ask questions
― 81 ―
and I've
known you for
6 months
but I have
no idea
who you are.
you're like
some
pulled down shade
but that's what
I like about
you:
your crudeness:
a woman can
drop
out of your
life and
forget you
real fast.
a woman
can't go anywhere
but UP
after
leaving you,
honey.
you've got to
be
the best thing
that ever
happened
to
a girl
who's between
one guy
and the next
and has nothing
to do
at the moment.
this fucking
― 82 ―
Scotch is
great.
let's play
Scrabble.
― 83 ―
before Aids

I'm glad I got to them
all, I'm glad I got so many of them
in.

I flipped them
poked them
gored them.

so many high-heeled shoes
under my bed
it looked like a January
Clearance Sale.

the cheap hotel rooms,
the drunken fights,
the phones ringing,
the walls banging

I was
wild
red-eyed
big-balled
unshaven
poor
foul-mouthed
I laughed
plenty

and I picked them off
the barstools
like
ripe plums.

― 84 ―
dirty sheets
bad whiskey
bad breath
cheap cigars
and to hell with the next
morning.

I always slept with my
wallet under my
pillow
bedded down with the
depressed and the
crazies.

I was barred from half the
hotels in
Los Angeles.

I'm glad I got to them all,
I plugged and banged and
sang and
some of them
sang with me
on those glorious
3 a.m. mornings.
when the cops
arrived, that was
grand,
we barricaded the doors
and taunted
them
and they never waited around
until noon
(checking-out time) to
arrest us,
we weren't that
important

― 85 ―
but
I thought we were
walking toward the bar,
and what a place the bar was
around noon, so quiet and
empty,
a place to begin
again,
to buck up with a quiet
beer,
looking out across at the
park
with the ducks over there
and the tall trees
over there.

so,
always broke but always
money from somewhere,
I waited
getting ready to
plug and bang and poke
and sing again
in those good old times
in those very very very
good old times
before Aids.
― 86 ―
hunk of rock

Nina was the hardest of them
all,
the worst woman I had known
up to that moment
and I was sitting in front of
my secondhand black and white
tv
watching the news
when I heard a suspicious
sound in the kitchen
and I ran out there
and saw her with
a full bottle of whiskey—
a 5th—
and she had it and
was headed for the back porch
door
but I caught her and
grabbed at the bottle.
"give me that bottle, you
fucking whore!"
and we wrestled for the
bottle
and let me tell you
she gave me a good fight
for it
but
I got it away from her
and I told her to
get her ass out of
there.
she lived in the same place
in the back
upstairs.

― 87 ―
I locked the door
took the bottle and a
glass
went out to the couch
sat down and
opened the bottle and
poured myself a good
one.

I shut off the tv and
sat there
thinking about what a
hard number
Nina was.
I came up with
at least
a dozen lousy things
she had done
to me.

what a whore.
what a hunk of rock.

I sat there drinking
the whiskey
and wondering
what I was doing
with Nina.

then there was a
knock on the
door.
it was Nina's friend,
Helga.

"where's Nina?"
she asked.

"she tried to steal
my whiskey, I
ran her ass
out of here."
― 88 ―

"she said to meet
her here."

"what for?"

"she said me and her
were going to do it
in front of you
for $50."

"$25."

"she said $50."

"well, she's not
here ... want a
drink?"

"sure ..."

I got Helga a glass
poured her a
whiskey.
she took a
hit.

"maybe," she said,
"I ought to go get
Nina."

"I don't want to see
her."

"why not?"

"she's a whore."

― 89 ―
Helga finished her
drink and I poured
her another.
she took a
hit.

"Benny calls me a
whore, I'm no
whore."

Benny was the guy
she was shacked
with.

"I know you're no
whore, Helga."

"thanks. Ain't ya got no
music?"

"just the radio ..."

she saw it
got up
turned it
on.
some music came
blaring out.

Helga began to
dance
holding her whiskey
glass in one
hand.
she wasn't a good
dancer
she looked
ridiculous.

― 90 ―
she stopped
drained her drink
rolled her glass along the
rug
then ran toward
me
dropped to her knees
unzipped me
and then
she was down
there
doing tricks.

I drained my
drink
poured another.

she was
good.
she had a college
degree
some place back
East.

"get it, Helga, get
it!"

there was a loud
knock
on the front
door.

"HANK, IS HELGA
THERE?"

"WHO?"

"HELGA!"

"JUST A MINUTE!"

― 91 ―
"THIS IS NINA, I WAS
SUPPOSED TO MEET
HELGA HERE, WE HAVE A
LITTLE SURPRISE FOR
YOU!"

"YOU TRIED TO STEAL
MY WHISKEY, YOU
WHORE!"

"HANK, LET ME
IN!"

"get it, Helga, get
it!"

"HANK!"

"Helga, you fucking whore ...
Helga! Helga! Helga!!"

I pulled away and
got up.

"let her in."

I went to the
bathroom.

when I came out they
were both sitting there
drinking and smoking
laughing about
something.
then they
saw me.

"50 bucks," said Nina.

"25 bucks," I said.
― 92 ―

"we won't do it
then."

"don't then."

Nina inhaled
exhaled.
"all right, you
cheap bastard, 25
bucks!"

Nina stood up and
began taking her
clothes off.

she was the hardest
of them
all.

Helga stood up and
began taking her
clothes off.

I poured a
drink.
"sometimes I wonder
what the hell is
going on
around here," I
said.

"don't worry about
it, Daddy, just
get with it!"

"just what am I
supposed to
do?"
― 93 ―

"just do
whatever the fuck
you feel
like doing,"
said Nina
her big ass
blazing
in the
lamplight.
― 94 ―
poetry

it
takes
a lot of

desperation

dissatisfaction

and
disillusion

to
write

a
few
good
poems.

it's not
for
everybody

either to

write
it

or even to

read
it.
― 95 ―
dinner, 1933

when my father ate
his lips became
greasy
with food.

and when he ate
he talked about how
good
the food was
and that
most other people
didn't eat
as good
as we
did.

he liked to
sop up
what was left
on his plate
with a piece of
bread,
meanwhile making
appreciative sounds
rather like
half-
grunts.

― 96 ―
he slurped his
coffee
making loud
bubbling
sounds.
then he'd put
the cup
down:
"dessert? is it
jello?"

my mother would
bring it
in a large bowl
and my father would
spoon it
out.

as it plopped
in the dish
the jello made
strange sounds,
almost fart-
like
sounds.

then came the
whipped cream,
mounds of it
on the
jello.

"ah! jello and
whipped cream!"

my father sucked the
jello and whipped
cream
off his spoon—
it sounded as if it
was entering a
wind
tunnel.

― 97 ―
finished with
that
he would wipe his
mouth
with a huge white
napkin,
rubbing hard
in circular
motions,
the napkin almost
hiding his
entire
face.

after that
out came the
Camel
cigarettes.
he'd light one
with a wooden
kitchen match,
then place the
match,
still burning,
onto an
ashtray.

then a slurp of
coffee, the cup
back down, and a good
drag on the
Camel.

"ah that was a
good
meal!"

― 98 ―
moments later
in my bedroom
on my bed
in the dark
the food that I
had eaten
and what I had
seen
was already
making me
ill.

the only good
thing
was
listening to
the crickets
out there,
out there
in another world
I didn't
live
in.
― 99 ―
such luck

we were at this table,
men and women,
after dinner.
somehow
the conversation got
around to
PMS.
one of the ladies
stated firmly that
the only cure for
PMS
was old
age.
there were other
remarks
that I have
forgotten,
except for one
which came from this
German guest
once married,
now divorced.
also, I had seen
him with
any number of
beautiful young
girlfriends.
anyhow, after quietly
listening
to our conversation
for some time
he asked us,
"what's PMS?"

― 100 ―
now here was one
truly touched
by
the angels.

the light was so
bright
we
all looked
away.
― 101 ―
flophouse

you haven't lived
until you've been in a
flophouse
with nothing but one
light bulb
and 56 men
squeezed together
on cots
with everybody
snoring
at once
and some of those
snores
so
deep and
gross and
unbelievable—
dark
snotty
gross
subhuman
wheezings
from hell
itself.

your mind
almost breaks
under those
death-like
sounds

― 102 ―
and the
intermingling
odors:
hard
unwashed socks
pissed and
shitted
underwear

and over it all
slowly circulating
air
much like that
emanating from
uncovered
garbage
cans.

and those
bodies
in the dark

fat and
thin
and
bent

some
legless
armless

some
mindless

and worst of
all:
the total
absence of
hope

it shrouds
them
covers them
totally.
― 103 ―

it's not
bearable.

you get
up

go out

walk the
streets

up and
down
sidewalks

past buildings

around the
corner

and back
up
the same
street

thinking

those men
were all
children
once

what has happened
to
them?

and what has
happened
to
me?
― 104 ―

it's dark
and cold
out
here.
― 105 ―
hand-outs

sometimes I am hit
for change
3 or 4 times
in twenty minutes
and nine times out of
ten I'll
give.
the time or two
that I don't
I have an instinctive
reaction
not to
and I
don't
but mostly I
dig and
give
but each time
I can't help but
remember
the many times
hollow-eyed
my skin tight to the
ribs
my mind airy and
mad
I never asked
anybody
for anything
and it wasn't
pride
it was simply because
I didn't respect
them
didn't regard them
as worthy human
beings.
― 106 ―
they were the
enemy
and they still are
as I dig
in
and
give.
― 107 ―
waiting

hot summers in the mid-30's in Los Angeles
where every 3rd lot was vacant
and it was a short ride to the orange
groves—
if you had a car and the
gas.

hot summers in the mid-30's in Los Angeles
too young to be a man and too old to
be a boy.

hard times.
a neighbor tried to rob our
house, my father caught him
climbing through the
window,
held him there in the dark
on the floor:
"you rotten son of a
bitch!"

"Henry, Henry, let me go,
let me go!"

"you son of a bitch, I'll kill
you!"

my mother phoned the police.

another neighbor set his house on fire
in an attempt to collect the
insurance.
he was investigated and
jailed.

― 108 ―
hot summers in the mid-30's in Los Angeles,
nothing to do, nowhere to go, listening to
the terrified talk of our parents
at night:
"what will we do? what will we
do?"

"god, I don't know ..."

starving dogs in the alleys, skin taut
across ribs, hair falling out, tongues
out, such sad eyes, sadder than any sadness
on earth.

hot summers in the mid-30's in Los Angeles,
the men of the neighborhood were quiet
and the women were like pale
statues.

the parks full of socialists,
communists, anarchists, standing on the park
benches, orating, agitating.

the sun came down through a clear sky and
the ocean was clean
and we were
neither men nor
boys.

we fed the dogs leftover pieces of dry hard
bread
which they ate gratefully,
eyes shining in
wonder,
tails waving at such
luck

as
World War II moved toward us,
even then, during those
hot summers in the mid-30's in Los Angeles.
― 109 ―
those mornings

I still remember those New Orleans rats
out on the balcony railings
in the dark of early morning
as I stood waiting my turn at the
crapper.
there were always two or three
big ones
just sitting there—sometimes they'd
move quickly then
stop and sit there.
I looked at them and they looked at
me.
they showed no fear.

at last the crapper door would open
and out would walk
one of the tenants
and he always looked worse than
the rats
and then he'd be gone
down the hallway
and I'd go into the still-
stinking crapper
with my hangover.

and almost always
when I came out
the rats would be gone.
as soon as it got a little light
they would
vanish.

― 110 ―
and then
the world would be
mine,
I'd walk down the stairway
and into it
and my low-wage
pitiful
job
while remembering the
rats,
how it was better for them
than for
me.

I walked to work as the sun
came up hot
and the whores slept
like
babies.
― 111 ―
everything you touch

putting on your torn clothes in an old New Orleans roominghouse,
you and your stockboy soul,
then rolling your little green wagon past the salesgirls who
took no notice of you, those girls dreaming of bigger
game with their tiny rectangular
brains.

or in Los Angeles, coming in from your shipping clerk job at
an auto parts warehouse, taking the elevator up to 319 to find
your woman sprawled out on the bed, drunk at
6 p.m.

you were never any good at picking them, you always got the
leftovers, the crazies, the alkies, the pill-freaks.
maybe that was all you could get and maybe you were all they
could get.

you went to the bars and found more alkies, pill-freaks, crazies.
all they had to show you were a pair of well-turned ankles in
spike-heeled shoes.
you thumped up and down on beds with them as if you had
discovered
the meaning of
existence.

then there was this day at work when Larry the salesman came
down the
aisle with his big belly and his little button eyes, Larry always
walked loudly on leather-soled shoes and he was almost always
whistling.

he stopped whistling and stood at your shipping table as you
worked.

― 112 ―
then he began rocking back and forth, he had this habit and
he stood there rocking, observing you, he was one of those jokers,
you
know, and then he began laughing, you were sick from a long crazy
night, needed a shave, you were dressed in a torn shirt.

"what is it, Larry?" you asked.

and then he said, "Hank, everything you touch turns to shit!"

you couldn't argue with him about that.
― 113 ―
car wash

got out, fellow said, "hey!" walked toward
me, we shook hands, he slipped me 2 red
tickets for free car washes, "find you later,"
I told him, walked on through to waiting
area with wife, we sat on outside bench.
black fellow with a limp came up, said,
"hey, man, how's it going?"
I answered, "fine, bro, you makin' it?"
"no problem," he said, then walked off to
dry down a Caddy.
"these people know you?" my wife asked.
"no."
"how come they talk to you?"
"they like me, people have always liked me,
it's my cross."
then our car was finished, fellow flipped
his rag at me, we got up, got to the
car, I slipped him a buck, we got in, I
started the engine, the foreman walked
up, big guy with dark shades, huge guy,
he smiled a big one, "good to see you,
man!"
I smiled back, "thanks, but it's your party,
man!"
I pulled out into traffic, "they know you,"
said my wife.
"sure," I said, "I've been there."
― 114 ―
the flashing of the odds

parking lot attendant, Bobby, was funny,
wise-cracking, laughing, was
good at it, he was an original,
sometimes when I was down
listening to Bobby brought me back
up.

didn't see him for 3 weeks, asked the
other attendants but they didn't know
or made things up.

drove in today and there was
Bobby, his uniform wrinkled, he was just
standing there while the others
worked.

approached him and he seemed to
recognize me, then spoke: "got all
stressed out driving here, it took me
3 hours!"

he wasn't laughing, had grown suddenly
fat, his belt buckle was
unfastened, I buckled him up, he
had a 3 day beard,
his
hair was grey, his face wrinkled, his
eyes stuck in a backwash, 20 years
lost in 3 weeks.

"good to see you, Bobby."

"yeah, sure, when you going to buy
this place?"

he was talking about the
racetrack.
― 115 ―

I walked across the lot and into
the track, took the escalator
up, reached the top floor, walked
toward the service stand.
Betty saw me and got my coffee
poured.

"you ready for a big day?"
she asked.

"I'm ready for any kind of
day."

"you come here to win, don't
you?"

"I come here not to
lose."

I took my coffee to a seat
facing the toteboard.
the odds flashed, I sat down
spilling hot coffee
on my
hand.

"shit," I said.

and the day went
on.
― 116 ―
poetry contest

send as many poems as you wish, only
keep each to a maximum of ten lines.
no limit as to style or content
although we prefer poems of
affirmation.
double space
with your name and address in the
upper left hand
corner.
editors not responsible for
manuscripts
without an s.a.s.e.
every effort
will be made to
judge all works within 90
days.
after careful screening
the final choices will be made by
Elly May Moody,
general editor in charge.
please enclose ten dollars for
each poem
submitted.
a final grand prize of
seventy-five dollars will
be awarded the winner
of the
Elly May Moody Golden Poetry 
Award ,
along with a scroll
signed by
Elly May Moody.
there will also be 2nd, 3rd and
4th prize scrolls
also signed by
Elly May Moody.
all decisions will be
― 117 ―
final.
the prize winners will
appear in the Spring issue of
The Heart of Heaven .
prize winners will also receive
one copy of the magazine
along with
Elly May Moody's
latest collection of
poetry,
The Place Where Winter 
Died .

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