Love is a Dog from Hell (22 page)

 

all of a sudden I’m a painter.

a girl from Galveston gives me

$50 for a painting of a man

holding a candycane while

floating in a darkened sky.

 

than a young man with a black beard

comes over

and I sell him three for $80.

he likes rugged stuff

where I write across the painting—

“shoot shit” or “GRATE ART IS

HORSESHIT, BUY TACOS.”

 

I can do a painting in 5 minutes.

I use acrylics, paint right out of

the tube.

I do the left side of the painting

first with my left hand and then

finish the right side with my

right hand.

 

now the man with the black beard

comes back with a friend whose hair

sticks out and they have a young blonde

girl with them.

 

black beard is still a sucker:

I sell him a hunk of shit—

an orange dog with the word

“DOG” written on his side.

 

stick-out hair wants 3 paintings

for which I ask $70.

he doesn’t have the money.

I keep the paintings but

he promises to send me a

girl called Judy

in garter belt and high heels.

he’s already told her about me:

“a world-renowned writer,” he said

and she said, “oh no!” and pulled

her dress up over her head.

“I want that,” I told him.

then we haggled over terms

I wanted to fuck her first

 

then get head later.

“how about head first and

fuck later?” he asked.

 

“that doesn’t work,” I

said.

 

so we agreed:

Judy will come by and

afterwards

I will hand her the

3 paintings.

so there we are:

back to the barter system,

the only way to beat

inflation.

 

never the less,

I’d like to

start the Men’s Liberation Movement:

I want a woman to hand
me
3 of her

paintings after I have

made love to her,

and if she can’t paint

she can leave me

a couple of golden earrings

or maybe a slice of ear

in memory of one who

could.

 

16 years old

during the depression

I’d come home drunk

and all my clothing—

shorts, shirts, stockings—

suitcase, and pages of

short stories

would be thrown out on the

front lawn and about the

street.

 

my mother would be

waiting behind a tree:

“Henry, Henry, don’t

go in…he’ll

kill you, he’s read

your stories…”

 

“I can whip his

ass…”

 

“Henry, please take

this…and

find yourself a room.”

 

but it worried him

that I might not

finish high school

so I’d be back

again.

 

one evening he walked in

with the pages of

one of my short stories

(which I had never submitted

to him)

and he said, “this is

a great short story.”

I said, “o.k.,”

and he handed it to me

and I read it.

it was a story about

a rich man

who had a fight with

his wife and had

gone out into the night

for a cup of coffee

and had observed

the waitress and the spoons

and forks and the

salt and pepper shakers

and the neon sign

in the window

and then had gone back

to his stable

to see and touch his

favorite horse

who then

kicked him in the head

and killed him.

 

somehow

the story held

meaning for him

though

when I had written it

I had no idea

of what I was

writing about.

 

so I told him,

“o.k., old man, you can

have it.”

and he took it

and walked out

and closed the door.

I guess that’s

as close

as we ever got.

 

he walks up to my Volks

after I have parked

and rocks it back and

forth

grinning around his

cigar.

 

“hey, Hank, I notice

all the women around your

place lately…good looking

stuff; you’re doing all

right.”

 

“Sam,” I say, “that’s not

true; I am one of God’s most

lonely men.”

 

“we got some nice girls at

the parlor, you oughta try

some of them.”

 

“I’m afraid of those places,

Sam, I can’t walk into them.”

 

“I’ll send you a girl then,

real nice stuff.”

 

“Sam, don’t send me a whore,

I always fall in love with

whores.”

 

“o.k., friend,” he says,

“let me know if you change

your mind.”

I watch him walk away.

some men are always on

top of their game.

I am mostly always

confused.

 

he can break a man

in half

and doesn’t know who

Mozart is.

 

who wants to listen

to music

anyhow

on a rainy Wednesday

night?

 

Sam the whorehouse man

has squeaky shoes

and he walks up and down

the court

squeaking and talking to

the cats.

he’s 310 pounds,

a killer

and he talks to the cats.

he sees the women at the massage

parlor and has no girlfriends

no automobile

he doesn’t drink or dope

his biggest vices are

chewing on a cigar and

feeding all the cats in

the neighborhood.

some of the cats get

pregnant

and so finally there are

more and more cats and

everytime I open my door

one or two cats will

run in and sometimes I’ll

forget they are there and

they’ll shit under the bed

or I’ll awaken at night

hearing sounds

leap up with my blade

sneak into the kitchen and

find one of Sam the whorehouse

man’s cats walking around on

the sink or sitting on top

of the refrigerator.

Sam runs the love parlor

around the corner

and his girls stand in the

doorway in the sun

and the traffic signals go

red and green and red and green

and all of Sam’s cats

possess some of the meaning

as do the days and the nights.

 

“…I’ve seen people in front of

their typewriters in such a bind

that it would blow their intestines

right out of their assholes if they

were trying to shit.”

 

“ah hahaha hahaha!”

 

“…it’s a shame to work
that

hard to try to write.”

 

“ah hahaha hahaha!”

“ambition rarely has anything to

do with talent. luck is best, and

talent limps along a little

bit behind luck.”

 

“ah haha.”

 

he rose and left with an 18 year old virgin, the most

beautiful co-ed of them

all.

I closed my notebook

got up and limped a

little bit behind

them.

 

sometimes after you get your ass

kicked real good by the forces

 

you often wish you were a crane

standing on one leg

 

in blue water

 

but there’s

the

old up-bringing

you know:

 

you don’t want to be

a crane

standing on one leg

 

in blue water

 

the distress is not

enough

 

and

 

the victory

limps

 

a crane can’t

buy a piece of ass

 

or

 

hang itself at noon

in Monterey

those are some of

the things

 

humans can do

 

besides

stand on one leg

 

my grandfather was a tall German

with a strange smell on his breath.

he stood very straight

in front of his small house

and his wife hated him

and his children thought him odd.

I was six the first time we met

and he gave me all his war medals.

the second time I met him

he gave me his gold pocket watch.

it was very heavy and I took it home

and wound it very tight

and it stopped running

which made me feel bad.

I never saw him again

and my parents never spoke of him

nor did my grandmother

who had long ago

stopped living with him.

once I asked about him

and they told me

he drank too much

but I liked him best

standing very straight

in front of his house

and saying, “hello, Henry, you

and I, we know each

other.”

 

the strong men

the muscle men

there they sit

down at the beach

cocoa tans

with the weights

scattered about them

untouched

 

they sit as the

waves go in and

out

 

they sit as the

stock market

makes and breaks

men and families

 

they sit while

one punch of a button

could turn their

turkeynecks to

black and shriveled

matchsticks

 

they sit while

suicides in green rooms

trade it in for space

 

they sit while former

Miss Americas

weep before wrinkled

mirrors

 

they sit

they sit with less

life-flow than apes

and my woman stops and

looks at them:

“oooh oooh oooh,” she

says.

 

I walk off with

my woman as the waves

go in and out.

 

“there’s something wrong

with them,” she said, “what

is it?”

 

“their love only runs in

one direction.”

 

the seagulls whirl and

the sea runs in and out

 

and we left them

back there

wasting themselves

time

this moment

the seagulls

the sea

the sand.