Love is a Dog from Hell (18 page)

 

I read last Saturday in the

redwoods outside of Santa Cruz

and I was about 3/4’s finished

when I heard a long high scream

and a quite attractive

young girl came running toward me

long gown & divine eyes of fire

and she leaped up on the stage

and screamed: “I WANT YOU!

I WANT YOU! TAKE ME! TAKE

ME!”

I told her, “look, get the hell

away from me.”

but she kept tearing at my

clothing and throwing herself

at me.

“where were you,” I

asked her, “when I was living

on one candy bar a day and

sending short stories to the

Atlantic Monthly?”

she grabbed my balls and almost

twisted them off. her kisses

tasted like shitsoup.

2 women jumped up on the stage

and

carried her off into the

woods.

I could still hear her screams

as I began the next poem.

 

maybe, I thought, I should have

taken her on the stage in front

of all those eyes.

but one can never be sure

whether it’s good poetry or

bad acid.

 

I’d tell them to have an unhappy love

affair, hemorrhoids, bad teeth

and to drink cheap wine,

avoid opera and golf and chess,

to keep switching the head of their

bed from wall to wall

and then I’d tell them to have

another unhappy love affair

and never to use a silk typewriter

ribbon,

avoid family picnics

or being photographed in a rose

garden;

read Hemingway only once,

skip Faulkner

ignore Gogol

stare at photos of Gertrude Stein

and read Sherwood Anderson in bed

while eating Ritz crackers,

realize that people who keep

talking about sexual liberation

are more frightened than you are.

listen to E. Power Biggs work the

organ on your radio while you’re

rolling Bull Durham in the dark

in a strange town

with one day left on the rent

after having given up

friends, relatives and jobs.

never consider yourself superior and/

or fair

and never try to be.

have another unhappy love affair.

watch a fly on a summer curtain.

never try to succeed.

don’t shoot pool.

be righteously angry when you

find your car has a flat tire.

take vitamins but don’t lift weights or jog.

 

then after all this

reverse the procedure.

have a good love affair.

and the thing

you might learn

is that nobody knows anything—

not the State, nor the mice

the garden hose or the North Star.

and if you ever catch me

teaching a creative writing class

and you read this back to me

I’ll give you a straight A

right up the pickle

barrel.

 

a house with 7 or 8 people

living in it

getting up the rent.

there’s a stereo never used

and a set of bongos

never used

and there are rugs over the

windows

and you smoke

as the living roaches

stumble over buttons on your

shirt and tumble

off.

 

it’s dark and somebody sends

out for food. you eat the food

and sleep. everybody sleeps at

once: on floors, coffeetables,

couches, beds, in bathtubs. there’s

even one in the brush outside.

 

then somebody wakes up and

says, “come on, let’s roll

one!”

 

a few others wake up.

“sure. yea. o.k.”

 

“all right. come on, somebody

roll a couple. let’s get it

on!”

 

“yeah! Let’s get it on!”

 

we smoke a few joints and then

we’re asleep again

except we reverse positions:

bathtub to couch, coffeetable to

rug, bed to floor, and a new one

falls into the brush

outside, and they haven’t yet

found Patty Hearst and Tim doesn’t

want to speak to

Allan.

 

the guy in the front court can’t

speak English, he’s Greek, a

rather stupid-looking and

fairly ugly man.

 

now my landlord does some painting,

it’s not very good.

 

he showed the Greek one of his paintings.

 

the Greek went out and purchased

paper, brushes, paints.

 

the Greek started painting in his front

court. he leaves the paintings outside to

dry.

 

the Greek had never painted before—

here it comes:

        a blue guitar

        a street

        a horse.

 

he’s good

in his mid-forties he’s

good.

he’s found a

toy.

he’s happy

now.

 

then I think, I wonder if he will get

very good?

and I wonder if I will have to watch

the rest?

the glory and the women and the women and

the women and the women and

the decay.

 

I can almost smell the bloodsuckers forming

to the left.

 

you see,

I have fastened to him already.

 

this one teaches

that one lives with his mother.

and that one is supported by a red-faced alcoholic father

with the brain of a gnat.

this one takes speed and has been supported by

the same woman for 14 years.

that one writes a novel every ten days

but at least pays his own rent.

this one goes from place to place

sleeping on couches, drinking and making his

spiel.

this one prints his own books on a duplicating

machine.

that one lives in an abandoned shower room

in a Hollywood hotel.

this one seems to know how to get grant after grant,

his life is a filling-out of forms.

this one is simply rich and lives in the best

places while knocking on the best doors.

that one had breakfast with William Carlos

Williams.

and this one teaches.

and that one teaches.

and this one puts out textbooks on how to do it

and speaks in a cruel and dominating voice.

 

they are everywhere.

everybody is a writer.

and almost every writer is a poet.

poets poets poets poets poets poets

poets poets poets poets poets poets

 

the next time the phone rings

it will be a poet.

the next person at the door

will be a poet.

this one teaches

and that one lives with his mother

and that one is writing the story of

Ezra Pound.

oh, brothers, we are the sickest and the

lowest of the breed.

 

oh, how worried they are about my

soul!

I get letters

the phone rings…

“are you going to be all right?”

they ask.

“I’ll be all right,” I tell them.

“I’ve seen so many go down the drain,”

they tell me.

“don’t worry about me,” I say.

 

yet, they make me nervous.

I go in and take a shower

come out and squeeze a pimple on my

nose.

then I go into the kitchen and make

a salami and ham sandwich.

I used to live on candy bars.

now I have imported German mustard

for my sandwich. I might be in danger

at that.

 

the phone keeps ringing and the letters keep

arriving.

 

if you live in a closet with rats and

eat dry bread

they like you.

you’re a genius

then.

 

or if you’re in the madhouse or

the drunktank

they call you a genius.

or if you’re drunk and shouting

obscenities and

vomiting your life-guts on

the floor

you’re a genius.

 

but get the rent paid up a month in

advance

put on a new pair of stockings

go to the dentist

make love to a healthy clean girl

instead of a whore

and you’ve lost your

soul.

 

I’m not interested enough to ask about

their souls.

I suppose I

should.

 

Shirley came to town with a broken leg

and met the Chicano who smoked

long slim cigars

and they got a place together

on Beacon street

5th floor;

the leg didn’t get in the way

too much and

they watched television together

and Shirley cooked, on her

crutches and all;

there was a cat, Bogey,

and they had some friends

and talked about sports and Richard Nixon

and how the hell to

make it.

it worked for some months,

Shirley even got the cast off,

and the Chicano, Manuel,

got a job at the Biltmore,

Shirley sewed all the buttons back on

Manuel’s shirts, mended and matched his

socks, then

one day Manuel returned to the place, and

she was gone—

no argument, no note, just

gone, all her clothes

all her stuff, and

Manuel sat by the window and looked out

and didn’t make his job

the next day or the

next day or

the day after, he

didn’t phone in, he

lost his job, got a

ticket for parking, smoked

four hundred and sixty cigarettes, got

picked up for common drunk, bailed

out, went

to court and pleaded

guilty.

 

when the rent was up he

moved from Beacon street, he

left the cat and went to live with

his brother and

they’d get drunk

every night

and talk about how

terrible

life was.

 

Manuel never again smoked

long slim cigars

because Shirley always said

how

handsome he looked

when he did.

 

I’ve always had trouble with

money.

this one place I worked

everybody ate hot dogs

and potato chips

in the company cafeteria for

3 days before each

payday.

I wanted steaks,

I even went to see the manager

of the cafeteria and

demanded that he serve

steaks. he refused.

 

I’d forget payday.

I had a high rate of absenteeism and

payday would arrive and everybody would

start talking about

it.

“payday?” I’d say, “hell, is this

payday? I forgot to pick up my

last check…”

 

“stop the bullshit, man…”

 

“no, no, I mean it…”

 

I’d jump up and go down to payroll

and sure enough there’d be a

check and I’d come back and show it

to them. “Jesus Christ, I forgot all about

it…”

 

for some reason they’d get

angry. then the payroll clerk would come

around. I’d have two

checks. “Jesus,” I’d say, “two checks.”

and they were

angry.

some of them were working

two jobs.

 

the worst day

it was raining very hard,

I didn’t have a raincoat so

I put on a very old coat I hadn’t worn for

months and

I walked in a little late

while they were working.

I looked in the coat for some

cigarettes

and found a 5 dollar bill

in the side pocket:

“hey, look,” I said, “I just found a 5 dollar

bill I didn’t know I had, that’s

funny.”

 

“hey, man, knock off the

shit!”

 

“no, no, I’m
serious
, really, I remember

wearing this coat when

I got drunk at the

bars. I’ve been rolled too often,

I’ve got this fear…I take money out of

my wallet and hide it all

over me.”

 

“sit down and get to

work.”

 

I reached into an inside pocket:

“hey, look, here’s a TWENTY! God, here’s a

 

TWENTY I never knew I

had! I’m

RICH!”

“you’re not funny, son of

a bitch…”

“hey, my God, here’s ANOTHER

twenty! too much, too too

much…I
knew
I didn’t spend all that

money that night. I thought I’d been

rolled again…”

 

I kept searching the

coat. “hey! here’s a ten and

here’s a fiver! my God…”

 

“listen, I’m telling you to
sit down

and shut up
…”

 

“my God, I’m RICH…I don’t even
need

this job…”

 

“man, sit
down
…”

I found another ten after I sat down

but I didn’t say

anything.

I could feel waves of hatred and

I was confused,

they believed I had

plotted the whole thing

just to make them

feel bad. I didn’t want

to. people who live on hot dogs and

potato chips for

3 days before payday

feel bad

enough.

I sat down

leaned forward and

began to go to

work.

 

outside

it continued to

rain.