me.
wearing the collar
I live with a lady and four cats
and some days we all get
along.
some days I have trouble with
one of the
cats.
other days I have trouble with
two of the
cats.
other days,
three.
some days I have trouble with
all four of the
cats
and the
lady:
ten eyes looking at me
as if I was a dog.
a cat is a cat is a cat is a cat
she’s whistling and clapping
for the cats
at 2 a.m.
as I sit in here
with my
Beethoven.
“they’re just prowling,” I
tell her…
Beethoven rattles his bones
majestically
and those damn cats
don’t care
about
any of it
and
if they did
I wouldn’t like them
as
well:
things begin to lose their
natural value
when they approach
human
endeavor.
nothing against
Beethoven:
he did fine
for what he
was
but I wouldn’t want
him
on my rug
with one leg
over his head
while
he was
licking
his balls.
marching through Georgia
we are burning like a chicken wing left on the grill of an
outdoor barbecue
we are unwanted and burning we are burning and unwanted we are
an unwanted
burning
as we sizzle and fry
to the bone
the coals of Dante’s Inferno spit and sputter beneath
us
and
above the sky is an open hand and
the words of wise men are useless
it’s not a nice world, a nice world it’s
not…
come on, try this nice burnt chicken-wing poem
it’s hot it’s tough not much
meat
but ’tis sadly sensible
and one or two bites ends it
thus
gone
it left like the ladies of old
as I opened the door
to the room
bed
pillows
walls
I lost it
I lost it somewhere
while walking down the street
or while lifting weights
or while watching a parade
I lost it
while watching a wrestling match
or while waiting at a red light
at noon on some smoggy day
I lost it while putting a coin
into a parking meter
I lost it
as the wild dogs slept.
I meet the famous poet
this poet had long been famous
and after some decades of
obscurity I
got lucky
and this poet appeared
interested
and asked me to his
beach apartment.
he was homosexual and I was
straight, and worse, a
lush.
I came by, looked
about and
declaimed (as if I didn’t
know), “hey, where the
fuck are the
babes?”
he just smiled and stroked
his mustache.
he had little lettuces and
delicate cheeses and
other dainties
in his refrigerator.
“where you keep your fucking
beer, man?” I
asked.
it didn’t matter, I had
brought my own
bottles and I began upon
them.
he began to look
alarmed: “I’ve heard about
your brutality, please
desist from
that!”
I flopped down on his
couch, belched,
laughed: “ah, shit, baby, I’m
not gonna hurt ya! ha, ha,
ha!”
“you are a fine writer,” he
said, “but as a person you are
utterly
despicable!”
“that’s what I like about me
best, baby!” I
continued to pour them
down.
at once
he seemed to vanish behind
some sliding wooden
doors.
“hey, baby, come on
out! I ain’t gonna do no
bad! we can sit around and
talk that dumb literary
bullshit all night
long! I won’t
brutalize you,
shit, I
promise!”
“I don’t trust you,”
came the little
voice.
well, there was nothing to
do
but slug it down, I was
too drunk to drive
home.
when I awakened in the
morning he was standing over
me
smiling.
“uh,” I said,
“hi…”
“did you mean what you
said last night?” he
asked.
“uh, what wuz
ut?”
“I slid the doors back and
stood there and you saw
me and you said that
I looked like I was riding the
prow of some great sea
ship…you said that
I looked like a
Norseman! is
that true?”
“oh, yeah, yeah, you
did…”
he fixed me some hot tea
with toast
and I got that
down.
“well,” I said, “good to
have met
you…”
“I’m sure,” he
answered.
the door closed behind
me
and I found the elevator
down
and
after some wandering about the
beach front
I found my car, got
in, drove off
on what appeared to be
favorable terms
between the famous poet and
myself
but
it wasn’t
so:
he started writing un-
believably hateful stuff
about
me
and I
got my shots in at
him.
the whole matter
was just about
like
most other writers
meeting
and
anyhow
that part about
calling him a
Norseman
wasn’t true at
all: I called him
a
Viking
and it also
isn’t true
that without his
aid
I never would have
appeared in the
Penguin Collection of
Modern Poets
along with him
and who
was it?
yeah:
La
mantia.
seize the day
foul fellow he was always wiping his nose on his
sleeve and also farting at regular
intervals, he was
uncombed
uncouth
unwanted.
his every third word was a crass
entrail
and he grinned through broken yellow
teeth
his breath stinking above the
wind
he continually dug into his crotch
left-
handed
and he always had a
dirty joke
at the ready,
a dunce of the lowest
order
a most most
avoided
man
until
he won the state
lottery.
now
you should see
him: always a young laughing lady on
each arm
he eats at the finest
places
the waiters fighting to get him
at their
table
he belches and farts away the
night
spilling his wineglass
picking up his steak with his
fingers
while
his ladies call him
“original” and “the funniest
man I ever met.”
and what they do to him
in bed
is a damned
shame.
what we have to keep
remembering, though, is that
50% of the state lottery is given to the
Educational System and
that’s important
when you realize that
only one person in
nine
can properly spell
“emulously.”
the shrinking island
I’m working on it as
the dawn bends toward me…
I almost had it at 3:34 a.m. but it
slipped away from me
with the wizardry of a
silverfish…
now
as the half-light moves toward me
like motherfucking death
I give up the battle
rise
move toward the bathroom
bang
into a wall
give a pitiful mewking
laugh…
flick on the light and
begin to piss, yes, in
the proper place
and
after flushing
think: another night
gone.
well, we gave it a bit of
a roar
anyhow.
we wash our
claws…
flick off the
light
move toward the
bedroom where the
wife
awakens enough
to say: “don’t step
on the cat!”
which brings us back
to
matters
real
as we find the bed
slip in
face to ceiling: a
grounded
drunken
fat
old
man.
magic machine
I liked the old records that
scratched
as the needle slid across
grooves well
worn
you heard the voice
coming through
the speaker
as if there were a person
inside that
mahogany
box
but you only listened while
your parents were
not there.
and if you didn’t wind
the victrola
it gradually slowed and
stopped.
it was best in late
afternoons
and the records spoke
of
love.
love, love, love.
some of the records had
beautiful purple
labels,
others were orange, green,
yellow, red, blue.
the victrola had belonged to
my grandfather
and he had listened to those
same
records.
and now I was a boy
and
I heard them.
and nothing I could think of
in my life then
seemed better than listening
to that
victrola
when my parents weren’t
there.
those girls we followed home
in Jr. High the two prettiest girls were
Irene and Louise,
they were sisters;
Irene was a year older, a little taller
but it was difficult to choose between
them;
they were not only pretty but they were
astonishingly beautiful
so beautiful
that the boys stayed away from them;
they were terrified of Irene and
Louise
who weren’t aloof at all,
even friendlier than most
but
who seemed to dress a bit
differently than the other
girls:
they always wore high heels,
silk stockings,
blouses,
skirts,
new outfits
each day;
and,
one afternoon
my buddy, Baldy, and I followed them
home from school;
you see, we were kind of
the bad guys on the grounds
so it was
more or less
expected,
and
it was something:
walking along ten or twelve feet behind them;
we didn’t say anything
we just followed
watching
their voluptuous swaying,
the balancing of the
haunches.
we liked it so much that we
followed them home from school
every
day.
when they’d go into their house
we’d stand outside on the sidewalk
smoking cigarettes and talking.
“someday,” I told Baldy,
“they are going to invite us inside their
house and they are going to
fuck us.”
“you really think so?”
“sure.”
now
50 years later
I can tell you
they never did
—never mind all the stories we
told the guys;
yes, it’s the dream that
keeps you going
then and
now.
fractional note
the flowers are burning
the rocks are melting
the door is stuck inside my head
it’s one hundred and two degrees in Hollywood
and the messenger stumbles
dropping the last message into a
hole in the earth
400 miles deep.
the movies are worse than ever
and the dead books of dead men read dead.
the white rats run the treadmill.
the bars stink in swampland darkness
as the lonely unfulfill the lonely.
there’s no clarity.
there was never meant to be clarity.
the sun is diminishing, they say.
wait and see.
gravy barks like a dog.
if I had a grandmother
/>
my grandmother could whip your
grandmother.
free fall.
free dirt.
shit costs money.
check the ads for sales…
now everybody is singing at once
terrible voices
coming from torn throats.
hours of practice.
it’s almost entirely waste.
regret is mostly caused by not having
done anything.
the mind barks like a dog.
pass the gravy.
it is so arranged all the way to
oblivion.
next meter reading date:
JUN 20.
and I feel good.
a following
the phone rang at 1:30 a.m.
and it was a man from Denver:
“Chinaski, you got a following in
Denver…”
“yeah?”
“yeah, I got a magazine and I want some
poems from you…”
“FUCK YOU, CHINASKI!” I heard a voice
in the background…
“I see you have a friend,”
I said.
“yeah,” he answered, “now, I want
six poems…”
“CHINASKI SUCKS! CHINASKI’S A PRICK!”
I heard the other
voice.
“you fellows been drinking?”
I asked.
“so what?” he answered. “you drink.”
“that’s true…”
“CHINASKI’S AN ASSHOLE!”
then
the editor of the magazine gave me the
address and I copied it down on the back
of an envelope.
“send us some poems now…”
“I’ll see what I can do…”
“CHINASKI WRITES SHIT!”
“goodbye,” I said.
You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense Page 11