Love Is a Dog From Hell Read online

  Hemingway’s brains dropping into

  the orange juice;

  Pascal cutting his wrists

  in the bathtub;

  Artaud locked up with the mad;

  Dostoevsky stood up against a wall;

  Crane jumping into a boat propeller;

  Lorca shot in the road by Spanish

  troops;

  Berryman jumping off a bridge;

  Burroughs shooting his wife;

  Mailer knifing his.

  —that’s what they want:

  a God damned show

  a lit billboard

  in the middle of hell.

  that’s what they want,

  that bunch of

  dull

  inarticulate

  safe

  dreary

  admirers of

  carnivals.

  Iron Mike

  we talk about this film:

  Cagney fed this broad

  grapefruit

  faster than she could

  eat it and

  then she

  loved him.

  “that won’t always

  work,” I told Iron

  Mike.

  he grinned and said,

  “yeh.”

  then he reached down

  and touched his belt.

  32 female scalps

  dangled there.

  “me and my big Jewish

  cock,” he said.

  then he raised his hands

  to indicate the

  size.

  “o, yeh, well,”

  I said.

  “they come around,” he

  said, “I fuck ’em, they

  hang around, I tell ’em,

  ‘it’s time to leave.’”

  “you’ve got guts,

  Mike.”

  “this one wouldn’t leave

  so I just got up and

  slapped her…she

  left.”

  “I don’t have your nerve,

  Mike. they hang around

  washing dishes, rubbing

  the shit-stains out of the

  crapper, throwing out the

  old Racing Forms…”

  “they’ll never get me,”

  he said,

  “I’m invincible.”

  look, Mike, no man is

  invincible.

  some day

  you’ll be sent mad by

  eyes like a child’s crayon

  drawing. you won’t be

  able to drink a glass of

  water or walk across a

  room. there will be the

  walls and the sound of

  the streets outside, and

  you’ll hear machineguns

  and mortar shells. that’ll

  be when you want it and

  can’t have it.

  the teeth

  are never finally the

  teeth of love.

  guru

  big black beard

  tells me

  that I don’t feel

  terror

  I look at him

  my gut rattles

  gravel

  I see his eyes

  look upward

  he’s strong

  has dirty fingernails

  and upon the walls:

  scabbards.

  he knows things:

  books

  the odds

  the best road

  home

  I like him

  but I think he

  lies

  (I’m not sure

  he lies)

  his wife sits

  in a dark

  corner

  when I first met

  her she was the

  most beautiful

  woman

  I had ever

  seen

  now she has

  become

  his twin

  perhaps not his

  fault:

  perhaps the thing

  does us all

  like that

  yet after I leave

  their house

  I feel terror

  the moon looks

  diseased

  my hands slip

  on the

  steering wheel

  I get my car

  out

  and down the

  hill

  almost crash it

  into a

  blue-green

  parked car

  clod me forever,

  Beatrice

  wavering poet, ha

  haha

  dinky dog of

  terror.

  the professors

  sitting with the professors

  we talk about Allen Tate

  and John Crow Ransom

  the rugs are clean and

  the coffeetables shine

  and there is talk of

  budgets and works in

  progress

  and there is a

  fireplace.

  the kitchen floor is

  well-waxed

  and I have just eaten

  dinner

  after drinking until

  3 a.m.

  after reading

  the night before

  now I’m to read again

  at a nearby college.

  I’m in Arkansas in

  January

  somebody even mentions

  Faulkner

  I go to the bathroom

  and vomit up the

  dinner

  when I come out

  they are all in their

  coats and overcoats

  waiting in the

  kitchen.

  I ’m to read in

  15 minutes.

  there’ll be a

  good crowd

  they tell me.

  for Al—

  don’t worry about rejections, pard,

  I’ve been rejected

  before.

  sometimes you make a mistake, taking

  the wrong poem

  more often I make the mistake, writing

  it.

  but I like a mount in every race

  even though the man

  who puts up the morning line

  tabs it 30 to one.

  I get to thinking about death more and

  more

  senility

  crutches

  armchairs

  writing purple poetry with a

  dripping pen

  when the young girls with mouths

  like barracudas

  bodies like lemon trees

  bodies like clouds

  bodies like flashes of lightning

  stop knocking on my door.

  don’t worry about rejections, pard.

  I have smoked 25 cigarettes tonight

  and you know about the beer.

  the phone has only rung once:

  wrong number.

  how to be a great writer

  you’ve got to fuck a great many women

  beautiful women

  and write a few decent love poems.

  and don’t worry about age

  and/or freshly-arrived talents.

  just drink more beer

  more and more beer

  and attend the racetrack at least once a

  week

  and win

  if possible.

  learning to win is hard—

  any slob can be a good loser.

  and don’t forget your Brahms

  and your Bach and your

  beer.

  don’t overexercise.

  sleep until noon.

  avoid credit cards

  or paying for anything on

  time.

  remember that there isn’t a piece of ass

  in this world worth over $50

  (in 1977).

  and if you have the ability to love

&nbsp
; love yourself first

  but always be aware of the possibility of

  total defeat

  whether the reason for that defeat

  seems right or wrong—

  an early taste of death is not necessarily

  a bad thing.

  stay out of churches and bars and museums,

  and like the spider be

  patient—

  time is everybody’s cross,

  plus

  exile

  defeat

  treachery

  all that dross.

  stay with the beer.

  beer is continous blood.

  a continuous lover.

  get a large typewriter

  and as the footsteps go up and down

  outside your window

  hit that thing

  hit it hard

  make it a heavyweight fight

  make it the bull when he first charges in

  and remember the old dogs

  who fought so well:

  Hemingway, Celine, Dostoevsky, Hamsun.

  if you think they didn’t go crazy

  in tiny rooms

  just like you’re doing now

  without women

  without food

  without hope

  then you’re not ready.

  drink more beer.

  there’s time.

  and if there’s not

  that’s all right

  too.

  the price

  drinking 15 dollar champagne—

  Cordon Rouge—with the hookers.

  one is named Georgia and she

  doesn’t like pantyhose:

  I keep helping her pull up

  her long dark stockings.

  the other is Pam-prettier

  but not much soul, and

  we smoke and talk and I

  play with their legs and

  stick my bare foot into

  Georgia’s open purse.

  it’s filled with

  bottles of pills. I

  take some of the pills.

  “listen,” I say, “one of

  you has soul, the other

  looks. Can’t I combine

  the 2 of you? take the soul

  and stick it into the looks?”

  “you want me,” says Pam, “it

  will cost you a hundred.”

  we drink some more and Georgia

  falls to the floor and can’t

  get up.

  I tell Pam that I like her

  earrings very much. Her

  hair is long and a natural

  red.

  “I was only kidding about the

  hundred,” she says.

  “oh,” I say, “what will it cost

  me?”

  she lights her cigarette with

  my lighter and looks at me

  through the flame:

  her eyes tell me.

  “look,” I say, “I don’t think I

  can ever pay that price again.”

  she crosses her legs

  inhales on her cigarette

  as she exhales she smiles

  and says, “sure you can.”

  alone with everybody

  the flesh covers the bone

  and they put a mind

  in there and

  sometimes a soul,

  and the women break

  vases against the walls

  and the men drink too

  much

  and nobody finds the

  one

  but they keep

  looking

  crawling in and out

  of beds.

  flesh covers

  the bone and the

  flesh searches

  for more than

  flesh.

  there’s no chance

  at all:

  we are all trapped

  by a singular

  fate.

  nobody ever finds

  the one.

  the city dumps fill

  the junkyards fill

  the madhouses fill

  the hospitals fill

  the graveyards fill

  nothing else

  fills.

  the 2nd novel

  they’d come around and

  they’d ask

  “you finished your

  2nd novel yet?”

  “no.”

  “whatsamatta? whatsamatta

  that you can’t

  finish it?”

  “hemorrhoids and

  insomnia.”

  “maybe you’ve lost

  it?”

  “lost what?”

  “you know.”

  now when they come

  around I tell them,

  “yeh. I finished

  it. be out in Sept.”

  “you finished it?”

  “yeh.”

  “well, listen, I gotta

  go.”

  even the cat

  here in the courtyard

  won’t come to my door

  anymore.

  it’s nice.

  Chopin Bukowski

  this is my piano.

  the phone rings and people ask,

  what are you doing? how about

  getting drunk with us?

  and I say,

  I’m at my piano.

  what?

  I’m at my piano.

  I hang up.

  people need me. I fill

  them. if they can’t see me

  for a while they get desperate, they get

  sick.

  but if I see them too often

  I get sick. it’s hard to feed

  without getting fed.

  my piano says things back to

  me.

  sometimes the things are

  scrambled and not very good.

  other times

  I get as good and lucky as

  Chopin.

  sometimes I get out of practice

  out of tune. that’s

  all right.

  I can sit down and vomit on the

  keys

  but it’s my

  vomit.

  it’s better than sitting in a room

  with 3 or 4 people and

  their pianos.

  this is my piano

  and it is better than theirs.

  and they like it and they do not

  like it.

  gloomy lady

  she sits up there

  drinking wine

  while her husband

  is at work.

  she puts quite

  some importance

  upon getting her

  poems published

  in the little

  magazines.

  she’s had two or

  three of her slim

  volumes of poems

  done in mimeo.

  she has two or

  three children

  between the ages

  of 6 and 15.

  she is no longer

  the beautiful woman

  she was. she sends

  photos of herself

  sitting upon a rock

  by the ocean

  alone and damned.

  I could have had

  her once. I wonder

  if she thinks I

  could have

  saved her?

  in all her poems

  her husband is

  never mentioned.

  but she does

  talk about her

  garden

  so we know that’s

  there, anyhow,

  and maybe she

  fucks the rosebuds

  and finches