Artist or Rich?
“I’d rather be Rich,” he replied, “for Artists can usually be found
sitting on the doorsteps of the
Rich.”
I’ve sat on the doorsteps of some expensive and
unbelievable homes
myself
but somehow I always managed to disgrace myself and / or insult
my Rich hosts
(mostly after drinking large quantities of their fine
liquor).
perhaps I was afraid of the Rich?
all I knew then was poverty and the very poor,
and I felt instinctively that the Rich shouldn’t be so
Rich,
that it was some kind of clever
twist of fate
based on something rotten and
unfair.
of course, one could say the same thing
about being poor,
only there were so many poor, it all seemed completely
out of proportion.
and so when I, as an Artist, visited the
homes of the Rich, I felt ashamed to be
there, and I drank too much of their fine wines,
broke their expensive glassware and antique dishes,
burned cigarette holes in their Persian rugs and
mauled their wives,
reacting badly to the whole damned
situation.
yet I had no political or social solution.
I was just a lousy houseguest,
I guess,
and after a while
I protected both myself and the Rich
by rejecting their
invitations
and everybody felt much better after
that.
I went back to
drinking alone,
breaking my own cheap glassware,
filling the room with cigar
smoke and feeling
wonderful
instead of feeling trapped,
used,
pissed on,
fucked.
operator
the phone doesn’t ring.
the hours hang limp and empty.
everybody else is having it
all.
it seems to never end.
one night it got very bad.
I needed just a voice.
I dialed the time on the
telephone and listened to her
voice as she said:
“it’s eleven ten and ten seconds.
it’s eleven ten and twenty seconds.
it’s eleven ten and thirty seconds …”
then she told me that it
was:
“eleven ten and forty seconds.”
she might have saved my life
although I’m not sure.
a note from Hades in the mailbox
it reads:
Mr. Chinaski, we stopped by to see if
you’re interested in a free lunch.
we’ll stop by again later this
afternoon.
we’ll bring some beer.
it is now 2 p.m.
call meanwhile if you’re interested.
397- 8211
Steve and Frank
on the sunny banks of the university
I think that all the decades of teaching English
Lit has gotten to him.
his own writing has become more and more
comfortable.
he has survived, he has held on to his job, he has
changed wives (often).
but it was all just too easy, really, teaching those Lit
classes
and coasting along and by
doing that he has missed out on something important,
reality perhaps,
and it’s beginning to show.
each new book of poetry gets more and more
comfortable (as I said earlier).
I think good poetry should startle, shatter and,
yes, entertain while getting as close to the truth as
possible.
I can get all the comfort I need from a good
cigar.
if this gentleman expects his own poetry to be taught
by others
in future English
Lit classes
he’d better get his ass out of the warm sand
and start splashing in the bloody waters of real
life.
or maybe he’d just rather be a good old guy
forever,
adored and comforted by the eager young
coeds.
that’s not so bad, really,
considering that you get paid very well for
that.
vacation in Greece
it was 4 years ago, she told me,
and we were on a private beach,
on the Mediterranean
my sister and I—
my sister is 18 and she has
long and lovely
legs,
and these 3 beautiful young men
bronzed and slim
put their blankets near ours;
one was an Englishman, one was a Scotsman
and the other might have been
Greek or Italian.
my sister and I started spreading oil on our
bodies, you
know, and it was all going well, you could
feel the vibes—
then this boy of 12 walked up,
he was bowlegged, had acne,
a very scruffy boy,
and he started speaking to the men
and the men talked to him
and one of the men gave him a cigarette
and the boy stood there
smoking the cigarette
not inhaling
and then one of the men got up
and went into the water with the boy
behind some rocks
where the water was shallow
and the man and the boy
stayed there quite a while.
then they came back.
then
the men got up, folded their blankets
and walked off.
the boy stood there
smoking another cigarette, not
inhaling.
I asked him:
“how did you get in here? it’s a
private beach.”
the boy pointed to a fence behind us.
“it was easy,” he said, “there’a hole in
the fence.”
his English was terrible.
and then he walked away along the shore with his bowlegs,
such a scruffy boy.
the spill
the jock’s horse
the 7 horse
clipped the heels
of the horse
in front of
him
stumbled and
fell
throwing the
jock
over its
head
and onto the
track before
some
oncoming
horses
most of
which
avoided the
jock’s
still
form
except for
the 9
horse
who gave him
one step
in the middle
of his
back
you could
see
the hoof
dig
in
then the
field was
past
and the
ambulance was
on its
way
the jock wore
Kelly green
silks,
black
sleeves.
3 or 4
people were now
gathered around
the
still
jock.
as the ambulance
moved in
the man behind
me
said to his
companion,
“let’s go get
a
beer.”
the last salamander
it’s freezing again, and the snitch is sucking up
to the warden. I’m down $20 with six to go, someone stole
the bell and Darlene broke her left kneecap; the hunter
weeps in the bracken, and in the mirror I see pennies for
eyes; this war is like a dead green shawl
as the last salamander
gets ready to
die.
I am down $50 with four to go,
the boy broke the mower on an apricot and
the skyscraper trembles in the bleeding January night.
I am down $100 with two to go, I will double up
face down, go for broke, and it
might be time for a trip to Spain or to buy
one last pair of new shoes.
it gets sad; the walls grip my
fingers and smile;
I know who killed Cock Robin; I know who tricked Benny
the Dip; and
now somebody is picking the lock and the searchlights are
out of focus.
I’m down $500 with one to go,
my horse explodes in the middle of the dream,
it’s really freezing now, can’t
get it up
can’t
get it down
can’t
get it;
a chorus of purple songbirds
shakes the trees; I watch a parade of wooden monkeys
burn; as the tin cock crows, I just don’t
understand.
learning the ropes
he was my guru.
he was a big man, bearded, self-assured.
he sat in one chair.
I sat in another.
we had been up together many days
and nights.
there had been an hour’s heavy
silence.
then he leaned forward slightly
and whispered,
“you don’t have to worry about
worms when you die, Chinaski,
worms don’t infest dead
bodies, it’s a fairy tale.”
“that’s good to know,” I
said.
then we fell into another
hour’s heavy
silence.
bombed away
when I was younger
when we were all younger
one of T. S. Eliot’s most admired
and envied
lines
was:
“this is the way the world
ends,
not with a bang
but a
whimper.”
before Hiroshima
we all wished we had written that immortal
line.
however
poor T.S. lost
much of his immortality
because of that
monstrous
event.
but at least
he had his immortal status
for a
while
and like the old fighter
Beau Jack said
after blowing his fortune on
parties, suckerfish and
women:
“it beats not ever having been
the champ.”
these days
we don’t know how
or
when
the world will
conclude.
the idea of
an immortal line or poem
seems somewhat
optimistic
not to mention the fact that
most of us now
do our whimpering long
before any possible
end.
the swimming pool will be going here
Mr. Cobweb, call me when the applause breaks out like a sprinkle of
henshit; 1671 wasn’t so long ago and tomorrow waits like a headless
anvil; but I’m still able to reach for my handkerchief
and wave to the ever-dancing girls (what dolls!) stomping away as
my brain in that dark cellar simmers in the stew.
sure, good things keep happening, eh? I mean, sometimes I fear
that I’m going to explode right through the top of my skull:
teeth, lungs, intestines, liver, bladder, balls and all, and
for hardly any reason! I’ve
got to be nuts, you
know! hope
so.
Mr. Cobweb, call me, I have an answering service, and oh yes, my friend
the great actor stuck his foot down into the dirt behind his mansion in
Malibu Canyon and told me: “the swimming pool will be going
here.”
mainly, though, what I like is how the sun keeps on trying and we
build sidewalks and walk on them, we go up and down in elevators, read
newspapers, take issue with events singular and worldly, keep exercising,
we keep going and going, it’s all rather fresh and exciting,
and new girls continue to get up to dance, those beautiful dancing
girls, I clutch the blade in my teeth and grin at them, Mr.
Cobweb!
and, Mr. Cobweb, there was another great actor, he was sitting with
his drink, looking down into his drink, he had a long thin sad neck
and I walked over and said, “listen, Harry, you’re always depressed, get
over it, you’re at the top of your game, things could be a lot worse, you
could be servicing Hondas at Jiffy Lube …”
Mr. Cobweb, even 1332 wasn’t so long ago, we are all blessed in this life,
looking around and trying to fit ourselves into the puzzle, it takes time,
a lifetime, many lifetimes, but we have to keep trying and that takes guts.
me? shit, I’ve had enough, it’s grand, sure, but let me nudge
out now. I distrust the whole tawdry game.
Mr. Cobweb, Al Capone has been dead a long time but it doesn’t seem so
long to me, I sit within these brown-yellow walls and there’s an old
rose stuck in an old drinking glass, it’s been there several months looking
at me and I reach out and touch it—the petals are still there but
they feel strangely like paper; why shouldn’t they, huh?
Mr. Cobweb, you tell the funniest jokes I’ve ever heard!
so call me any time, I always answer on the fourth ring, for
sure.
a bright boy
I was in one of those after-hour places.
I don’t know how long I had been there when
I noticed a dead cigar in my hand. I attempted
to light it and burned my nose.
“you ever meet Randy Newhall?” the guy
next to me asked.
“no …”
“he went through college in 2 years instead
of 4.”
I asked the barkeep to bring us a couple more
drinks.
“then he walked into the largest employment agency
in town, they had 50 applications for this
one job at a t
alent agency but
he just talked to the manager for 15
minutes and was hired.”
“uh …”
“he began in the mailroom and in 12 months he
was making package deals for tv programs
and movies.
nobody ever got out of the mailroom that
fast, and next he married a rich girl
just out of law school.”
“yeah?”
“after that he spent most of his
time putting golf balls into a water glass
in his office.
he made the work look easy …”
“listen,” I asked, “what time is it? the
battery in my watch went dead.”
“… and in another year
he was promoted to upper management and
a year later he took over the whole place.
he was
the youngest CEO in America.”
“you buy the next round,” I told him.
“sure, well, he doubled his work hours and
after a while his wife left him—women don’t
understand.”
“what?”
“guys like him.”
“oh …”
“he didn’t contest the divorce.
he just moved on. it didn’t faze him one bit.
it was amazing, you’d
see him having dinner with congressmen, with
the mayor.”
“are you going to get the next round?”
he told the barkeep, who brought two more.
“then he began working 16- and 18-hour
days and after work he’d frequent
after-hour places above the Sunset Strip, to relax,