You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense Read online

  steadying the old boy

  as I handed him his cane.

  he didn’t speak,

  he just smiled at me.

  then he turned

  forward.

  I stood behind him waiting

  my turn.

  bad times at the 3rd and Vermont hotel

  Alabam was a sneak and a thief and he came to my

  room when I was drunk and

  each time I got up he shoved me back

  down.

  you prick, I told him, you know I can

  take you!

  he just shoved me down

  again.

  when I sober up, I said, I’m going to kick you

  all the way to hell!

  he just kept pushing me

  around.

  I finally caught him a good one, right over the

  temple

  and he backed off and

  left.

  it was a couple of days later

  I got even: I fucked his

  girl.

  then I went down and knocked on his

  door.

  well, Alabam, I fucked your woman and now I’m going to

  kick you all the way to

  hell!

  the poor guy started crying, he put his hands over his

  face and just cried

  I stood there and watched

  him.

  I said, I’m sorry,

  Alabam.

  then I left him there, I went back to

  my room.

  we were all alkies and none of us had jobs, all we had

  was each other.

  even then, my so-called woman was in some bar or

  somewhere, I hadn’t seen her in a couple of

  days.

  I had a bottle of port

  left.

  I uncorked it and took it down to Alabam’s

  room.

  said, how about a drink,

  Rebel?

  he looked up, stood up, went for two

  glasses.

  the Master Plan

  starving in a Philadelphia winter

  trying to be a writer

  I wrote and wrote and drank and drank and

  drank

  and then stopped writing and concentrated on

  the drinking.

  it was another

  art-form.

  if you can’t have any luck with one thing you

  try another.

  of course, I had been practicing on the

  drinking-form

  since the age of

  15.

  and there was much competition

  in that field

  also.

  it was a world full of drunks and writers and

  drunk writers.

  and so

  I became a starving drunk instead of a starving

  writer.

  the best thing was the instant

  result.

  and I soon became the biggest and

  best drunk in the neighborhood and

  maybe the whole

  city.

  it sure as hell beat sitting around waiting for

  those rejection slips from The New Yorker and The

  Atlantic Monthly.

  of course, I never really considered quitting the

  writing game, I just wanted to give it a

  ten year rest

  figuring if I got famous too early

  I wouldn’t have anything left for the stretch run

  like I have now, thank

  you,

  with the drinking still thrown

  in.

  garbage

  I had taken a tremendous beating,

  I had chosen a real bull, and because of

  the girls and for himself and just because of his

  brutal escaping energy

  he had almost murdered me:

  I learned later

  that even after I was out

  he had kicked my head again and

  again

  and then had emptied several garbage cans

  over me

  and then they had left me there

  in that alley.

  I was the guy from out of town.

  it was around 6 a.m. on a Sunday

  morning when I came

  around.

  my face was a mass of

  bruises, scabs, clots, bumps, lumps, my lips

  thick and numb, my eyes almost swollen

  shut

  but I got to my feet and began

  walking;

  I could see traces of the sun, houses, the shaking

  sidewalk as I

  moved toward my room

  then I heard shuffling sounds from the

  center of the street

  and I forced my eyes to

  focus and saw this

  man staggering

  his clothing ripped and bloody

  he smelled of death and darkness

  but he kept moving forward

  down the middle of the street

  as if he had been walking for

  miles

  from some event so ugly that

  the mind itself might refuse to accept it

  as part of life.

  my impulse was to help him

  and I stepped off the

  curbing

  and moved toward him.

  he couldn’t see me, he moved forward

  looking for somewhere to go,

  anywhere, and

  I saw one of his eyes hanging

  out of the socket,

  dangling.

  I backed away.

  he was like a creature not of the

  earth.

  I let him go

  by.

  I heard him moving away

  behind me

  those blind steps

  lurching, in

  agony,

  senselessly

  alone.

  I got back on the

  sidewalk.

  I got back to my

  room.

  I got myself to the

  bed.

  fell face up

  the ceiling up there above me,

  I waited.

  my vanishing act

  when I got sick of the bar

  and I sometimes did

  I had a place to go:

  it was a tall field of grass

  an abandoned

  graveyard.

  I didn’t consider this to be a

  morbid pastime.

  it just seemed to be the best

  place to be.

  it offered a generous cure to

  the vicious hangover.

  through the grass I could see

  the stones,

  many were tilted

  at strange angles

  against gravity

  as though they must

  fall

  but I never saw one

  fall

  although there were many of those

  in the yard.

  it was cool and dark

  with a breeze

  and I often slept

  there.

  I was never

  bothered.

  each time I returned to the bar

  after an absence

  it was always the same with

  them:

  “where the hell you

  been? we thought you

  died!”

  I was their bar freak, they needed me

  to make themselves feel

  better.

  just like, at times, I needed that

  graveyard.

  let’s make a deal

  in conjunction with

  these rivers of shit

  that keep rolling through my brain, Captain

  Walrus, I can only say that I hardly understand

  it and would say

  any number of HAIL MARYS

  to put a stop to it—


  I’d even go back to living with that whore with the

  heart of brass just

  to keep these rivers of shit from rolling through my

  brain, Captain Walrus, but

  of course

  I would never stop playing the horses or

  drinking

  but

  Captain

  to keep these rivers from flowing

  I’d promise to never

  eat eggs again and

  I’d shave my head and my balls, I’d live in

  the state of Delaware and I’d even

  force myself to sit through any movie acted in by

  any member of the Fonda

  family.

  think about it, Captain Walrus, the

  plum is in the pudding and the parasol bends to

  the West wind

  I’ve got to do something about all

  this…

  it seems like it never

  stops.

  each man’s hell is in a different

  place: mine is just up and

  behind

  my ruined

  face.

  16-bit Intel 8088 chip

  with an Apple Macintosh

  you can’t run Radio Shack programs

  in its disc drive.

  nor can a Commodore 64

  drive read a file

  you have created on an

  IBM Personal Computer.

  both Kaypro and Osborne computers use

  the CP/M operating system

  but can’t read each other’s

  handwriting

  for they format (write

  on) discs in different

  ways.

  the Tandy 2000 runs MS-DOS but

  can’t use most programs produced for

  the IBM Personal Computer

  unless certain

  bits and bytes are

  altered

  but the wind still blows over

  Savannah

  and in the Spring

  the turkey buzzard struts and

  flounces before his

  hens.

  zero

  sitting here watching the second hand on the TIMEX go around and

  around…

  this will hardly be a night to remember

  sitting here searching for blackheads on the back of my neck

  as other men enter the sheets with dolls of flame

  I look into myself and find perfect emptiness.

  I am out of cigarettes and don’t even have a gun to point.

  this writer’s block is my only possession.

  the second hand on the TIMEX still goes around and

  around…

  I always wanted to be a writer

  now I’m one who can’t.

  might as well go downstairs and watch late night tv with the wife

  she’ll ask me how it went

  I’ll wave a hand nonchalantly

  settle down next to her

  and watch the glass people fail

  as I have failed.

  I’m going to walk down the stairway now

  what a sight:

  an empty man being careful not to trip and bang his empty

  head.

  putrefaction

  of late

  I’ve had this thought

  that this country

  has gone backwards

  4 or 5 decades

  and that all the

  social advancement

  the good feeling of

  person toward

  person

  has been washed

  away

  and replaced by the same

  old

  bigotries.

  we have

  more than ever

  the selfish wants of power

  the disregard for the

  weak

  the old

  the impoverished

  the

  helpless.

  we are replacing want with

  war

  salvation with

  slavery.

  we have wasted the

  gains

  we have become

  rapidly

  less.

  we have our Bomb

  it is our fear

  our damnation

  and our

  shame.

  now

  something so sad

  has hold of us

  that

  the breath

  leaves

  and we can’t even

  cry.

  I’ll take it…

  maybe I’m going crazy, that’s all right

  but these poems keep rising to the top of my

  head with more and more

  force. now

  after the oceans of booze that I have

  consumed

  it would only seem that attrition would

  be my rightful reward as I continue to

  consume—while

  the madhouses, skidrows and graveyards are

  filled with the likes of

  me—

  yet each night as I sit down to this machine

  with my bottle

  the poems flare and jump out, on and

  on—roaring in the glee of

  easy power: 65 years

  dancing—my mouth curling into a

  tiny grin

  as these keys keep meting out a

  substantial energy of cock-

  eyed miracle.

  the gods have been kind to me through this

  life-style that would have killed

  an ox of a man

  and I’m no ox of a

  man.

  I sensed from the beginning, of

  course, that there was a strange gnawing

  inside of me

  but I never dreamed this

  luck

  this absolute shot of

  grace

  my death will at most seem

  an

  afterthought.

  supposedly famous

  not much to hang onto in this early morning growling,

  my wife, poor dear, downstairs,

  I am at the racetrack all day and

  up here all night with the bottle and

  this machine.

  my wife, poor dear, may she find her place

  in heaven.

  then too

  the few people that I have

  known, the people I thought had that

  little extra flare

  that inventive humanity, well, they

  dissolved

  but

  being a natural loner

  I am not over-

  distraught—

  there are still my 5

  cats: Ting, Ding, Beeker, Bleeker and

  Blob.

  not much to hang on to in this early morning growling.

  I am now a

  supposedly famous

  writer

  influencing hordes of

  typists.

  would

  that I could

  laugh

  at all

  this.

  Fame is the last whore, all the others are

  gone.

  well, the competition ain’t been

  much

  but that’s no hair off my

  wrists: I realized all that

  long ago while

  starving and

  pissing out the

  window

  while smashing waterglasses of

  booze against the behind-in-the-

  rent

  walls.

  Ting, Ding, Beeker, Bleeker and

  Blob.

  now Death is a plant growing in my

  mind

  not much to hang on to in this early morning growling.

  I am sad for the dead and I am sad for the living

  but not for my 5 cats or

  for my wife, my wife who will<
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  find her place in

  heaven.

  and as for the people

  dissolved

  I didn’t dissolve them, they dissolved

  themselves.

  and that the sidewalks are empty while

  full of feet

  passing—

  this is the working of the

  way.

  not much to hang on to

  as

  a man plays a piano

  through my radio and

  the walls

  stand up and

  down

  as the courage of everything

  even the fleas

  the lice

  the tarantula

  astounds me

  in this early morning

  growling.

  the last shot

  here we are, once again, the last drink, the last

  poem—decades of this splendid luck—another drunken

  a.m., and not on the drunktank floor tonight waiting for

  the black pimp to get off the phone so I can put through my one

  allowed call (so many of those a.m.s too) it took

  me a long time to find the most interesting person to

  drink with: myself, like this, now reaching to my left

  for the last glass of the Blood of the

  Lamb.

  whorehouse

  my first experience in a whorehouse

  was in Tijuana.

  it was a large place on the edge of

  the city.

  I was 17, with two friends.

  we got drunk to get our guts

  up

  then went on

  in.

  the place was packed with

  servicemen

  mostly

  sailors.

  the sailors stood in long

  lines

  hollering, and beating on

  the doors.

  Lance got in a short

  line (the lines indicated the

  age of the whore: the shorter the

  line the older the

  whore)

  and got it over

  with, came out bold and