3 bathrooms. then the squaw decided that she also needed a
bath. and then somebody else decided they had to take a
shit. they all vanished. I drank my drink and went back to
sleep.
“we are so sorry to see you go,” a
voice said, waking me.
the Indians had left.
“it’s all right,” I
said.
I didn’t get any
argument.
I got into the car with Helen and the sight
of her nylon knees beat hammers into my brain.
I was so sorry that I would never possess anything good,
anything like her,
that nothing good would ever belong to me
not because I was always poor in dollars
but because I was poor at expressing myself one-on-one.
I was as yellow as the sun perhaps
but also as warm and as true as the sun
somewhere there inside me
but nobody would ever find it.
I would certainly end up forever crying the blues into a
coffee cup in a park for old men playing
chess or silly games of some sort.
shit! shit!
and then Helen shifted the gears and we rolled down through the
rich hills and there was nothing I could say to her
about her beauty or how tough I was
or that just to sit and look at her for a month
never to touch her again
would be my only desire
but like a bastard I was probably lying to myself
I probably wanted everything everything
but now at 45
having lived with a dozen women and loving none
I was now crazy, finished. as she
drove me through the hills everything screamed inside of
me, and I kept saying as we drove along
(to myself, of course)
fucker, it will pass,
everything passes,
it’s all a joke
a joke on you,
forget it, think of dead dogs dead things think of
yourself: unwanted, broke, simple, a supposed poet writing of
deep things, but you can’t really write about anything except
YOURSELF. isn’t it true? isn’t it true? you are a prick,
a self-centered jackass only wanting an easy way out? you crave
money, grandstands full of applause, recognition and a book
of poems that will still be admired in the year 2,179.
you are a
shit-yellow screaming jackal: you ain’t gonna make it and
you might as well get used to it
now.
we drove up to the little hotel
and the poor jackass poet said,
“may I say goodbye?” it was
like a bad movie, only it wasn’t a movie:
I could understand Dos’s Crime and Punishment
I could understand the moon leaning across a bar on skid row
and asking for a drink, but I couldn’t understand anything about
myself,
I was murdered, I was shit, I was a tentful of dogs,
I was poppies mowed down by machine-gun fire
I was a hotshot wasp in a web
I was less and less and still reaching for
something, and I thought of her corny remark
a night or so ago:
“you have wounded eyes.”
corny, of course, but anything that comes from a real
woman is not corny
and I thought of her decent paintings of people and things
reaching wanting wanting
and like a shell-shocked Jap surrounded by heroic
American troops
I kissed her
goodbye.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t make it good for you,”
she said. “I wasn’t ready, I guess.”
“no, it was my fault,”
I told her.
I walked into the little hotel in that
small town (from where they took you to the train
via bus) and I got lost, shit, I got lost,
I couldn’t find the ticket office, up and
down steps
in and out of doors
tears again finally
like a bad movie again, and
finally I found the ticket agent
and went through the business
of buying a ticket.
I went and sat in the lobby and
I looked up from my ticket
and there she was.
“what are you doing here?” I asked.
“I saw you all hunched up and sad and cold.
I kept thinking of you.”
the bus to the train was late, everything was
late, so she drove me around town meanwhile and I had to go through the
whole thing again with her.
and I knew that even the proper words would never do
the trick. I was dirty, dirt, I looked like dirt,
I was dirty, dirty dirt. I just wanted to get inside of her,
stay there, I was nothing but a cunt-wanter and
I was broke. I couldn’t spell, I didn’t even know about using
2 or 3 forks at dinner, I didn’t know anything about Harvard or
diplomas or 50 grand a year, and she knew that all that
was true: I had been kicked around for too long, I no longer
knew the way up or out or even wanted to know: I was destined for
failure.
I said goodbye again
sucking up all that was left of her into the
little that was left of
me. I said, “don’t look for me again. fuck it.
we are all lost. goodbye, goodbye.”
she was great. she drove off. I watched that last flash
of her go around the corner and disappear and
then I walked back into the hotel lobby.
they were chummy, 5 or 6 assholes still sitting and
waiting there.
2 were doctors. another was the possessor of something great
and important. they all had wives. it was beginning to
snow.
we all climbed into the bus to go to the
train. I was already numb,
numb again,
numb
again
again and again,
numbness and pain swelling in
me—just like in the good
old times.
the Mexican drove down the road and almost stripped the
gears.
the comfortable people made comfortable jokes
about weather and things
but I sat mostly silent
saying a word or so when necessary
a word or so
trying to hide from them the fact that I was a fool
and feeling terrible
and the small hills began to be covered with snow
slowly things became white
slowly things became whiter
and I knew that it all would finally pass
and thank the good grace of the good God,
my years and time were running
out; we drove on and on,
past little villages and both good things and
bad things were happening to the
people in those villages to
o,
but I still was nothing
but arms and ears and eyes and maybe there’d be
either some good luck for me or
more death tomorrow.
bewitched in New York
the lady was the most unfaithful and terrible I had
ever encountered and I knew it and she knew it and she was
both ugly and beautiful at the same time and the
two of her just sat there on the window
ledge of that open hotel window
in New York City on
one of the hottest days of all time, no
air-conditioning, no fan, we sweated and
suffered and waited for something
to happen.
I was drunk, she was on drugs, we had just
concluded a slippery bit of
copulation and afterward she said, “you son-of-a-bitch,
we’re stuck here in hell!”
“good,” I said.
then I saw her fall out of the window, we
were four floors up, I heard the scream,
her body was gone.
then it was back, she was sitting on the
window ledge again. “did you see that?” she
asked. “I fell out of the window!”
“good,” I said.
“but somehow I pulled myself back in!” she
said.
“good,” I said.
“is that all you can say?” she asked.
“‘good’?”
“I can say that I think you’re a witch or a devil
and that your window act just now proves
it.”
I felt that by falling out she had lifted my
spirits and then she had deliberately dashed
them by climbing back
in.
“so I’m a witch or a devil, huh? well, no more
ass for you!”
“good,” I said.
sometimes you live and stay with a woman and have no
real idea why.
with her I knew: it was the simple, fascinating,
unrelenting mystery and terror of
her self.
don’t worry, baby, I’ll get it
he saw her in a liquor store
and it shook him
shook shook shook
like shark meat alive still in sunlight flopping.
he hurled his eyes at her,
a miracle, he heard her talking to him,
she was funny, she made him laugh, she made him feel like
all the doors were open for him.
it was easy. she went back to his place with him.
they talked. it was easy. she was a glorious fuck. they
fucked 3 times. she
stayed.
“Smaltz,” they phoned him from work the next day,
“what ya doin’, ya didn’t come
in! we got the Granger-Wently order to get
out: 45 six-foot squeegees and 90 gallons of
ultramarine Day-Glo!”
“I’m busy,” he said, and they replied,
“we can get a shipping clerk
anywhere!” he hung up, turned her over and
fucked her
again.
it wasn’t the same as with the others:
every time he finished he felt he wanted more.
as she took the trip to the bathroom it seemed as if he
hadn’t yet really had her, and anything she put on,
a newspaper hat, a pair of his socks, she looked
glorious, funny funny, hell, she made him feel good,
everything she said, shit, was a
joke. she’d put that body up against his every morning and
say, “ah, don’t go ta work, Eddie baby, stay wit me!”
“I can’t go to work, sweets, I don’t have no job,” he’d say,
and they’d go at it
again.
so the day came: no rent, no coffee, no wine, no
cigarettes. the landlord stated: one more day;
get it up or get it out—!
“shit, I thought you knew what you were doing,”
she told Smaltz. it was the first time she wasn’t
funny.
“don’t worry, baby, I’ll get it,” he told
her, and they went one last good one.
lucky, he had the .32. he thought, liquor store, no, I’ll get the
big stuff, she’s got it
comin’, she’s for me, mine, paper hat, all that
shaking, god, nothing like
it.
he tried the bank. the big gray one nearby.
he went in. he was ready: .32, paper bag, the note:
“a stickup. quiet and you don’t die. no buttons. put money in
bag. I am desperate and will kill. please let us both live.”
she emptied the drawer into the bag. he saw it:
lots of hundreds, fifties. sweet mother. a trip to Paris.
the bank clerk looked good too. he’d like to fuck
her. anybody would.
he was almost at the door
when he sensed she’d tripped the button right
away. they’d even cleared the
crowd. the guard at the door was easy—
he was so fat Smaltz couldn’t miss:
he dropped like a putty freak.
outside he saw the squad car;
the thing was driving along the wrong side of
the street—how could they do that?—
keeping even as he was running,
and firing at his ass,
coming close; he ran up an alley, dead end,
but he caught a freight elevator
at the bottom, “move it up! MOVE IT UP!”
he shouted at another freak
but the freak just stood there
looking at the .32, and he shot the freak,
nothing else to do,
and he was working at the handles, trying to
close the doors
when they got there, fired at him,
fired into that cheap tin elevator; he couldn’t get off a
return shot. they got him, took the paper bag out of his
hand.
the next night she was sleeping with the owner of a
hardware store, Harry, a good solid income, 2 fingers
missing from his right hand—hunting accident in Indiana,
1938.
you could get another shipping clerk
anywhere.
the telephone message machine
is one of the world’s greatest
inventions.
seldom do I pick up the phone
to interrupt the
message
and speak directly to the
caller.
and I hardly ever phone
anybody
these days
nor did I in the
past
unless it was some new girlfriend
who had me by the
balls.
and she never had an
answering machine
just pills
unpaid bills
neglected children
many pressing needs
and an utterly overvalued sense of her
self,
especially by
me.
that nice girl who came in to change the sheets
I met her when she came in to
change the sheets.
St. Louis.
she told me: you’re sick.
and I said:
yes, I’m sick.
and she said:
you need something to drink
I came to change the sheets
but you need something to drink
give me some money and
I’ll come back with something to
drink.
so
I gave her the money
not knowing her
but she came back with something to
drink.
she sat in a chair and I
stayed in bed and we drank
silently.
and then we began to talk
and then we laughed a little
and I began to feel better and she
looked better
and I said:
I didn’t think you’d come back
and she said:
hell, I work here.
and I said:
o, that’s why you came
back.
and she said:
no, that’s not why I came back.
and
I liked that.
I hardly remember how it happened
but we were soon both in bed
smoking cigarettes and drinking
beer
out of those heavy quart
jugs.
there seemed no hurry.
and then it began to
work. I don’t know how it worked
but it was all right. we
fucked.
and she got up and closed the windows to the south
and said:
that’s what’s killing you
those gas fumes coming up from the avenue
that
and the drinking. at least we can get you
away from the gas fumes.
we laughed and then she got back in bed and we
talked some more and smoked and she
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