Storm for the Living and the Dead Page 11
well, we found
one and he ordered a
scotch and soda and I
ordered a whiskey
sour
and we sat there
looking straight
forward
really
not much to
say
except
some time later
still sitting there
drinking about the
same
he told me
his wife had left
him
for a real estate
agent
who worked out of
Arizona and
New Mexico
where things were
going
especially good
mostly around
Santa
Fe.
the world of valets
after having my car broken into twice
at the track—
you know how it is: your door is
jammed open when you
arrive
and inside there is nothing but
large empty holes where the
equipment was, nothing but the
curling of the
wires . . .
so I decided upon valet
parking
feeling it would be cheaper in
the long
run . . .
and the first thing I noticed
my first day at valet
parking
was that for the extra
price
they threw in a little
conversation
“hey, buddy, how’d you get a
car like that? you don’t look like
a guy with brains . . . you must have
inherited some money from your
father . . .”
“you guessed it,” I told the
valet.
the next day another valet
told me, “listen, I can get you
some cheap wine by the case and there’s
a crippled girl in the motel across the
track that gives the best head since
Cleopatra . . .”
the next one said, “hey, fuck-face,
how’s it going?”
I watched and noticed that the
valets treated the other patrons with
standard civility.
then
one day
they wouldn’t even give me
a ticket tab for my
car.
“how am I going to prove this
car is
mine?”
“you’ll just have to
convince us . . .”
when I came out that
evening
there was my car
parked at a little getaway
lane by the
hedge, I didn’t have to
wait like the
others
and I’d always hear some
little
story:
“hey, man, my wife tried to
commit suicide . . .”
“I can understand
that . . .”
day after day
a different story from a
different
valet:
“I love my wife but I got this
girlfriend and I fuck the shit out of
her . . . I mean, one day all I’m going to be
doing is shooting blue smoke, so what the
fuck?”
“Frank,” I told him, “how you run out your
string is up to you . . .”
and
like say
last Wednesday there was an odd
occurrence:
there’s the head valet
and he has these headphones and
mike
he used to call the cars of the
patrons
to the out-riding pick-
up drivers
and he placed the headphones
on my dome and there was
the mike
and he told me,
“Frank wants to hear from
you . . .”
and I saw him out there
tooling the white
pick-up
and I spoke into the
mike:
“Frank, baby, everything is
death!”
and I heard him back through the
headphones:
“FUCKING A-RIGHT!”
he waved and then had to
slam on the brakes
almost hitting a blue
’86 Caddy
it was the Hollywood Park meeting
summer 1986
and the valets who parked the
old man’s battered 1979
BMW with the fog lights ripped
away
and the small colors of the
German flag
left corner
back window
I got into that machine and drove it
out of there, the centuries still
moving toward the dark
forever and
forever
and I drove east down Century
got on the Harbor Freeway
south
there’s much more to betting the
horses than cashing or tearing up
tickets.
I live to write and now I’m dying
I’ve told this one before and it has never gotten published so
maybe I didn’t tell it properly, so
it goes like this: I was in Atlanta, living in a paper
shack for $1.25 a week.
no light.
no heat.
it’s freezing, I’m out of money but I do have
stamps
envelopes
paper.
I mail out letters for help, only I don’t know
anybody.
there are my parents but I know they won’t
care.
I write one to them
anyhow.
then
who else?
the editor of the New Yorker, he must know me, I’ve
mailed him a story a week for
years.
and the editor of Esquire
and the Atlantic Monthly
and Harper’s.
“this is not a submission,” I wrote
them, “or maybe it is . . . anyhow . . .”
and then came the pitch: “just a dollar, it will
save my life . . .” and etc. and etc. . . .
and somehow
I had the addresses of Kay Boyle and Caresse
Crosby
and
I wrote them.
at least Caresse had published me in her
Portfolio. . . .
I took all the letters down to the corner mailbox
dropped them in and
waited.
I thought, somebody will take pity on the starving
writer, I am a dedicated
man:
I live to write and now I am
dying.
and
each day
I thought that I
would.
I stalled the rent, I found pieces of food
in the streets, usually
frozen.
I had to take it in and thaw it
under my bedcover.
I thought of Hamsun’s Hunger
and I
laughed.
day followed cold day,
slowly.
the first letter was from my father,
a six pager, and I shook the pages
again and again
but there was no
money
just
advice,
the main bit
being: “you will never be a
write
r! what you write is too
ugly! nobody wants to read that
CRAP!”
then the day
came!
a letter from Caresse
Crosby!
I opened it.
no money
but
neatly typed:
“Dear Charles:
it was good to hear from
you. I have given up the
magazine. I now live in a
castle in Italy. it is
high on a mountain but
below me is a village
and I often go down there
to help the poor. I feel
it is my calling.
love,
Caresse . . .”
didn’t she read my letter?
I
was the poor!
did I have to be an Italian
peasant to
qualify?
and the magazine editors never
responded and neither did
Kay Boyle
but I never liked her writing
anyhow.
and I never expected much
from the magazine
editors.
but Caresse
Crosby?
BLACK SUN PRESS?
I now even remember how
I finally got out of
Atlanta.
I was just wandering the
streets and I got to this
little wooded
area.
there was a tin shack there
and a big red sign
said: “HELP WANTED!”
inside was a man with
pleasant blue eyes and he was
quite friendly
and I signed on to a
railroad track gang:
“someplace west of
Sacramento.”
on the ride back
in that dusty one-hundred-year-old coach with
the torn seats and the rats and
the cans of pork and beans
none of the fellows knew that I had been
published in Portfolio along with
Sartre, Henry Miller, Genet and
etc.
along with reproduced paintings by
Picasso and etc. and etc.
and if they had known they wouldn’t have
given a shit
and frankly
I didn’t either.
it was only some decades after
when I was in slightly better circumstances
I happened to read about the death of
Caresse Crosby
and I once again became confounded
by her refusal to
send a lousy buck to a
starving American genius.
that’s it
this is the last time I’m writing this
one.
it should get
published . . .
and if it does I’m going to get hundreds
of letters
from starving American geniuses
asking for a buck, five bucks, ten or
more.
I won’t tell them I’m helping the
poor, à la Caresse.
I’ll tell them to read
the Collected Poems of
Kay Boyle.
rip it
when a poem doesn’t work, forget it, don’t hound it, don’t
fondle it and molest it, don’t make it join the A.A. or
become a Born Again
Christian.
when a poem doesn’t work, just pull the sheet out of the
machine, rip it, toss it in the basket—that feels
good.
listen, you write because it’s the last machinegun
on the last hill.
you write because you’re a bird sitting on a wire, then
suddenly your wings flap and your little dumb ass is
up in the air.
you write because the madhouse sits there belching and
farting, heavy with minds and bodies, you write because
you fear ultimate madness . . .
when a poem doesn’t work, it doesn’t work; forget it;
pace is the essence.
I know of a lady who writes so many poems that she must
arise at 7 A.M. and type until midnight.
she is in a poetry writing competition—with
herself.
when a poem doesn’t work, it’s not the end; it’s not even a
rotten banana, it’s not even a wrong number call asking for
Blanche Higgins.
when a poem doesn’t work it is just because you didn’t have
it that time.
or have it
at any time?
take that paper, tear it, basket it, then
wait.
but don’t sit in front of the machine, do something
else—watch tv, say hello to your wife, pet the
cat.
everything is not made
of paper.
Henry Miller and Burroughs
you mean, you don’t like them?
I am asked again and
again.
no.
what is it?
just don’t like.
I can’t believe this. why
don’t you like
them?
oh, god, crap off.
you like anybody?
sure.
name them.
Celine, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, early
Gorky, J. D. Salinger, e. e. cummings,
Jeffers, Sherwood Anderson, Li Po,
Pound, Carson McCullers . . .
o.k., o.k., but I can’t believe you
don’t like Henry Miller or Burroughs,
especially, Henry Miller.
crap off.
ever met Miller?
no.
I think you are kidding me about not liking
Henry Miller.
uh uh.
is it professional jealousy?
I don’t think so.
Miller opened doors for all of
us.
and I am opening my door for
you.
why are you upset with all
this?
not upset, but you ever fucked a
chicken in the ass?
no.
go do it, then come back and we’ll
talk about William B. and especially
Henry M.
I think you’re a weird prick . . .
move out or I’ll punch you
out.
you’ll hear from me.
if you’re ever heard from it will
be because I write of
you, now move
out!
good night.
good, I said as the door
closed,
night.
family tree
not much in my family tree, well, there was my uncle
John, wanted by the F.B.I., they got me first.
Grandpa Leonard, on my father’s side, he became very
kind when drunk, praised everybody, gave away money,
wept copiously for the human condition, but when he
sobered up was said to be one of the meanest
creatures ever seen, heard or avoided.
not much else except Grandpa Willy on my mother’s
side (over there in Germany): “He was a kind man,
Henry, but all he wanted to do was drink and play his
violin, he played it so very good, he had this fine
position with this leading symphony orchestra but he
lost that because of his drinking, nobody would hire
him, but he was good with the violin, he went to cafes
and got a table and played his violin, he put his hat
on the table upside down and the people would put so
much money in
there but he kept buying drinks and
playing the violin and soon he didn’t play so good
anymore and they would ask him to leave but the next
night he would find another cafe, another table, he
wrote his own music and nobody could play the violin
like he could.
He died one night at his table, he put the violin
down, had a drink, placed his head on the table and
died.”
well, there was my uncle Ben, he was so handsome it
was frightening, he was too handsome, he just radiated,
you couldn’t believe it and it wouldn’t go away, all he
could do about it was smile and light another cigarette
and find another woman to support and console him, and
then find another woman to do the same, and then find
another.
he died of TB in a sanitarium in the hills, the pack of
cigarettes under his pillow, dead he smiled, and at his
funeral 2 dozen of the most beautiful women in Pasadena,
Glendale and Echo Park wept
unashamedly as my father cursed him in his coffin: “You
rotten son of a bitch, you never worked a day in your
life!”
my father, of course, was one I could never figure out—
I mean, how he could have ever gotten into the family
tree.
but I was feeling pretty good up to here, there’s hardly
any use making this a depressing poem.
well, sometimes you get a strange monkey on a branch and all you
can do is forgive if you can and forget it, if possible,
and if neither of these works, then think of the others
and know that, at least, some of your blood is not without
hope.
being here
when it gets at its worst, there is nothing to be
done, it’s almost to laugh, putting your clothes
on again, going out, seeing faces, machines,
streets, buildings, the unfurling of the
world.
I act out motions, exchange monies, answer
questions, ask few, as the hours toil on,
following me, they are not always constantly
terrible—at times I am stricken with a wild
joy and I laugh, hardly knowing
why.
perhaps the worst trick that I have learned is to