Henry Miller
and
Camus.
then I hocked the
typewriter and
stopped
writing.
I felt that what I
had written was
meaningless.
I went from
city to city
from room to
room
from bar to
bar.
the war
ended and I
continued
existing in that
manner.
I read the
successful writers
and decided that
they too
were
meaningless.
I really didn’t
begin writing
again
until I started
living with
women.
they startled
me
out of my
stupor,
dropped me
splashing and
thrashing into a
new
confusion.
my work began
to appear
in literary magazines.
people hated me
for the way
I wrote about
women.
but these people
never met the
women I
lived
with.
I was only
photographing
in words
the reality of
it all.
I wrote of my
horrible women
and my
horrible jobs
and the first damn
thing you knew
I had
half-a-fame.
I noticed that the
sycophants and
weaklings were
writing poetry.
so,
I tried that
too.
it was
easy.
the whole game
was just a matter
of tossing your
stuff at
them.
I gave readings,
packed them in,
I drank throughout,
insulting them,
tossing the
crap.
they hated it
and loved
it,
they ate up
my crap.
and through it
all
I had this
feeling of
bored
disinterest.
but then I
noticed that
the women I went
with were getting
younger,
with better bodies,
longer hair,
more light to their
eyes.
it was
paying off.
I no longer had to
hock typewriters
or work horrible
jobs.
I had become
something to
some
people.
others had
better sense.
but I was the
same
half-shot
asshole that
I had
always
been,
I was nothing
at all
but somehow
I had stumbled
into a lucky and
easy
game,
a shell game,
a hustle,
a lark,
a sunny
midnight,
a stance,
an
out,
an
in,
and yes I’ve been
there
ever
since.
traffic report
here in Los Angeles
on the freeways
it’s like the Wild West
again.
many of the drivers carry guns
and if you cut them off
or irritate them in any manner
with your driving,
they simply pull up, point their
guns and begin
firing.
life has gotten to be too much
for many of us out
here,
the razor’s edge is always
up
and any slight, slight as it might
be
becomes the ultimate and final
challenge.
many wait for it, many even hope
for it.
but out of it all, something else
has emerged:
far more polite driving habits.
who the hell wants to catch a
.32 caliber bullet in order to gain
3 car lengths in
heavy traffic?
me?
I’m so polite I’d make a nun
puke.
I prefer to die by my own
hand.
hands
I’m not even drinking
and I look down at my
hands and they look
large.
unfortunately for me
I’ve always had
small hands.
the hands are the
tools
for fist fights,
in gripping an
ax,
in strangling
and
related
exercises
I have always been
disadvantaged.
but now
my hands look
large.
I look down at
them
and they grow
larger.
they keep growing
it’s
marvelous.
now I can
beat hell out of
some guy.
I decide to go
downstairs and
show my wife
my new
hands.
“look!” I’ll say.
“look!”
and I’ll hold
out my
hands.
and she’ll say,
“what?
what is it?”
I decide not to
go downstairs.
I just sit here
and look at
my hands.
it is one of my
better
evenings.
yesterday I was
very
depressed.
final score
at the track today
read where Kosinski
did it in the bathtub
with a bag over his
head.
bad health was
inferred
but loss of
stature and literary fame
are very unhealthy
to some.
plus New York
publisher’s parties,
power plays,
and
the hint that
he had outside
help writing
his books.
he had friends
at The New York
Times,
enemies at the
Village Voice.
not killed by the
Holocaust,
he couldn’t live
with the
critics.
bag over his
head
in a bathtub
full of
water.
what Hitler
couldn’t do,
he did to
himself.
happy
journey.
the misanthrope
I’ve been accused of being
one.
well, I’m the ruins of Athens,
you know.
I’m always working to
rebuild, I’m on the
mend.
when I am with people
something gets subtracted
from me.
most people are hardly
joyous and seldom
interesting.
I listen to their complaints,
take note of their
braggadocio,
their unoriginal
insights.
they yawn my life
away.
you ask me to embrace
them?
I don’t hate them,
I don’t want to defeat
them or kill them.
I just want to get away
from them.
it is when I am alone
that I feel at my
best.
it is my normal
way,
it is when I smooth
out, float,
it is when whatever
light there is
enters
me.
the ruins of Athens.
the old bum.
the cockroach in the
cathedral.
the good wine.
the mental conversations
with Mrs. Death.
the dream of golden
windmills.
the inhaling of
life.
the soaring confinement.
the gentle walls.
if preferring this to
Humanity makes me a
misanthrope
then I
am
to the hilt,
gladly
now
here
tonight
tomorrow
next year
alone with
aloneness
finally.
putting it to bed
the first poem is the last poem is the
best poem
pulling its stockings off
late in the night of the
morning
the best poem is the last
poem
the poem poem poem
as nine tenths of the people of
this city are
asleep
I am up with the murderers and the
thieves and the cab drivers
and some of the
prostitutes
and many of the drunks
and the mad
and the insomniacs
and the etc.
I murder the language
I steal the language,
I drink the language,
I am mad with the language
in the cab of my mind,
I am a whore.
the last poem
running out of my fingers
soon I will be asleep with
my wife and my
cats.
we will be all in the same
room,
still,
except for some wheezings
and turnings
and this last poem will
sit in this room
and I will be in the other
room
and some day you will
read this poem,
perhaps,
and think,
that guy makes too much
of it.
the last poem
the last poem
the best for me.
the trash can
this is great, I just wrote two
poems I didn’t like.
there is a trash can on this
computer.
I just moved the poems
over
and dropped them into
the trash can.
they’re gone forever, no
paper, no sound, no
fury, no placenta
and then
just a clean screen
awaits you.
it’s always better
to reject yourself before
the editors do.
especially on a rainy
night like this with
bad music on the radio.
and now—
I know what you’re
thinking:
maybe he should have
trashed this
misbegotten one
also.
ha, ha, ha,
ha.
block
in the past two months the poems have
riveted themselves to paper in ungodly
numbers
and if a poet may judge—
most of them were of high quality.
now I have become spoiled,
I walked into here tonight expecting
more luck
but the night has been slow.
and rightfully so—
occurrence must precede action,
the tank must refill.
writing, at its best, is not a contest,
it’s not even an occupation,
it’s a hazardous madness
that arrives at its own
behest.
prod it and you lose it.
pretend, and the words fall
ill.
when the lulls arrive there is
nothing to do but
wait,
do other things.
the writing must leap upon you
like a wild beast.
there are none of those in this
room with me
tonight.
they are elsewhere.
they are with somebody
else.
so all I can do is sit in this chair
tonight
and tell you that I can’t
write.
there are other things to do.
like now I am going downstairs
to see my wife
and my 6 cats
and they will see me
and we will look at each
other.
it will be all right.
I’m sure it
will.
they might even remember
me.
storm
a storm at last in this damned Los Angeles
desert,
even the lights went out in the neighborhood,
most of the people asleep,
the drunks just pour another drink,
I poured another drink,
1:42 a.m.
the lights go back on,
Brahms begins to play on the radio again,
I think of Turgenev, just for the hell of it,
just because I like his name.
there are good names: Mozart, Celine,
Artaud, Bach.
some names ring through and stick.
anyhow, it’s raining and raining and raining.
and Joe Louis is dead and Ty Cobb is dead
and it’s been a long time since the Waner brothers
patrolled the outfield in Pittsburgh
and whatever happened to Smith Brothers cough
drops?
I used to eat them like candy.
we need the rain.
we need the rain.
we need it.
I used to eat those cough drops like candy and I had
a dot-and-dash set and I knew the Morse code and I
sent out S.O.S.s for years but help never
came.
Turgenev.
I wish my name was Turgenev.
hello, I am Ivan Turgenev and it’s raining and I’m writing
about the rain
it rains hard here in Russia and the nights are black and
the days are black
and my girlfriend keeps telling me about our leader who has
arching eyebrows.
and I say, “oh, yes, very interesting…”
/> my name is Turgenev and it’s raining and we need the
rain.
ran into Gorky the other day and he said rain was just so
much capitalist bullshit.
crazy guy, crazy.
well, it’s 1:58 a.m. and I am sleepy.
sleeping in the rain helps me forget things like I am going
to
die and you are going to die and the cats are going to die
but it’s still good to stretch out and know you have arms
and
feet and a head, hands, all the parts, even eyes to close
once
more, it really helps to know these things, to know your
advantages
and your limitations, but why do the cats have to die, I
think that the
world should be full of cats and full of rain, that’s all, just
cats and
rain, rain and cats, very nice, good
night.
the similarity
lost another 3 page poem to this computer,
reminds me of the past,
you know, with some women
you leave them in bed
before going off to the warehouse
to work
and you ask them,
Betting on the Muse Page 19