Storm for the Living and the Dead Read online

  I found myself flying to this other

  state to see her—twice. and

  each time noticing

  more men’s heads about her

  apartment.

  “who’s this guy?” I asked her

  about one of them.

  “oh, that’s Billyboy, the bronco

  rider . . .”

  I left 2 or 3 days

  later . . .

  lives continued and 2 or 3 women later

  my friend Jack Bahiah came by. we

  talked of this and that, then Jack

  mentioned that he had flown out to

  see the sculptress.

  “did she do your head, Jack?”

  “yeah, man, she did my head but it

  didn’t look like me, man. guess who

  it looked like, man?”

  “I dunno, man . . .”

  “it looked like you . . .”

  “Jack, my man, you always had a great line

  of shit . . .”

  “no shit, man, no shit . . .”

  Jack and I drank much wine that night, he’s

  pretty good at pouring it down.

  “I was holding her in my arms in the bed

  and she said, ‘God, I love him, Jack, I

  miss him!’ and then she started crying.”

  I didn’t hate him at all for fucking her

  for sleeping against her when I had slept

  against her for 5 or 6 years, and that shows

  the durability of humans: we can roust it

  out and punch it down and forget it.

  I know that she’s still sculpting men’s

  heads and can’t stop. she once told me

  that Rodin did something similar in a

  slightly different way. all right.

  I wish her the luck of the clay and

  the luck of the men. it’s been a long

  night into noon, sometimes, for most

  of us.

  chili and beans

  hang them upside down through the plentiful

  night,

  burn their children and molest their crops,

  cut the throats of their wives,

  shoot their dogs, pigs and servants;

  whatever you don’t kill, enslave;

  your politicians will make you heroes,

  courts of international law will rule

  your victims guilty;

  you will be honored, given medals,

  pensions, villas along the river

  with your choice of pre-prostitute

  women;

  the priests will open the doors of God

  to you.

  the important thing is victory,

  it always has been;

  you will be ennobled,

  you will be promoted as the humble and

  gracious conqueror

  and you will believe it.

  what it means is that the human mind

  is not yet ready

  so you will claim a victory for the

  human spirit.

  a cut throat can’t answer.

  a dead dog can’t bite.

  you’ve won.

  proclaim the decency.

  go to your grave cleanly—

  nobody cares

  nobody really cares

  didn’t you know?

  didn’t you remember?

  nobody really cares

  even those footsteps

  walking toward somewhere

  are going nowhere

  you may care

  but nobody cares—

  that’s the first step

  toward wisdom

  learn it

  and nobody has to care

  nobody is supposed to care

  sexuality and love are flushed away

  like shit

  nobody cares

  learn it

  belief in the impossible is the

  trap

  faith kills

  nobody cares—

  the suicides, the dead, the gods

  or the living

  think of green, think of trees, think

  of water, think of luck and glory of a

  sort

  but cut yourself short

  quickly and finally

  of depending upon the love

  or expecting the love of

  another

  nobody cares.

  kuv stuff mox out

  gunned down outside the Seaside Motel I stand looki

  ng at the live lobster in a fishshop on the Redondo

  Beach pier the redhead gone to torture other males

  it’s raining again it’s raining again and again som

  etimes I think of Bogart and I don’t like Bogart an

  y more kuv stuff mox out—when you get a little mon

  ey in the bank you can write down anything on the p

  age call it Art and pull the chain gunned down in a

  fish market the lobsters you see they get caught lik

  e we get caught. think of Gertie S. sitting there

  telling the boys how to get it up. she was an ocea

  n liner I prefer trains pulling boxcars full of gun

  s underwear pretzels photos of Mao Tse-tung barbell

  s kuv stuff mox out—(write mother) when you flower

  my stone notice the fly on your sleeve and think of

  a violin hanging in a hockshop. many hockshops hav

  e I been gunned down in best one in L.A. they pull

  a little curtain around he who wishes to hock and h

  e who might pay something. it’s an Art hockshops a

  re needed like F. Scott Fitz was needed which makes

  us pause this moment: I like to watch live lobster

  s they are fire under water hemorrhoids—gross othe

  r magic—balls!: they are lobsters but I like to w

  atch them when I if I should get rich I will get a

  First page of the first 10-page draft.

  large glass tank say ten feet by four by four and I

  ’ll sit and watch them for hours while drinking the

  white moselle I am drinking now and when people com

  e by I will chase them away like I do now. I mean,

  some people say change means growth well certain per

  manent acts also prevent decay like flossing fuckin

  g fencing fatting belching and bleeding under a hun

  dred watt General Electric bulb. novels are nice m

  ice are fussy and my lawyer tells me that Abraham L

  incoln did some shit that never got into the histor

  y books—which makes it the same wall up and down.

  never apologize. understand the sorrow of error. b

  ut never. don’t apologize to an egg a serpent a lo

  ver. gunned down in a green taxi outside Santa Cru

  z with an AE-I in my lap grifted in the pickpocket’

  s hand slung like a ham. was it Ginsberg did a may

  pole dance in Yugoslavia to celebrate May D

  ay catch me doing that and you can cut both my back

  pockets off. you know I never heard my mother piss

  . I’ve heard many women piss but now that I think

  of it I can’t ever remember hearing my mother piss.

  I am not particular about planets I don’t dislike t

  hem I mean like peanut shells in an ashtray that’s

  planets. sometimes every 3 or 4 years you see a fa

  ce it is usually not the face of a child but that f

  ace makes an astonishing day even though the light

  is in a certain way or you were driving by in an a

  utomobile or you were walking and the face was movi

  ng past in a bus or an auto it make that day of the

  moment like a brain-jolt something to tell you it’s

  always solitary being gunned down while slipping a

  stick
of gum out of the wrapper outside Hollywood’s

  oldest pool parlor on the west side of Western belo

  w the boulevard. the gross is net and the net is g

  ross and Gertie S. never showed her knees to the bo

  ys and Van Gogh was a lobster a roasted peanut. I

  think that “veer” is a splendid word and it’s still

  raining gunned down in water waterbags worth of pig

  ’s snouts cleverly like cigarettes for men and for

  women I care enough to proclaim liberty throughout

  the land then wonder why nuns are nuns butchers tha

  t and fat men remind me of glorious things breathin

  g dust through their hems. if I gunned down Bogar

  t he’d spit out his cigarette grab his left side in

  black and white striped shirt look at me through a

  butterfat eye and drop. if meaning is what we do w

  e do plenty if meaning isn’t what we do check squar

  e #9 it probably falls halfway in between which sus

  tains balance and the poverty of the poor and fire

  hydrants mistletoe big dogs on big lawns behind iron

  fences. Gertie S., of course, was more interested

  in the word than the feeling and that’s clearly fai

  r because men of feeling (or women) (or) (you see)

  (how nice) (I am) usually become creatures of Actio

  n who fail (in a sense) and are recorded by the peo

  ple of words whose works usually fail not matter. (

  how nice). roll and roll and roll it keeps raining

  gunned down in a fish market by an Italian with bad

  breath who never knew I fed my cat twice a day and

  never masturbated while he was in the same room. no

  w you know in this year of 1978 I paid $8441.32 to

  the government and $2419.84 to the State of Califor

  nia because I sat down to this typewriter usually d

  runk after the horse races and I don’t even use a ma

  jor commercial publisher and I used to live off of

  one nickel candy bar a day typewriter in hock I pri

  nted my stuff with a pen and it came back. I mean,

  fellow dog, men sometimes turn into movies. and som

  etimes movies can get to be not so good. pray for

  me. I don’t apologize. cleverness is not the out

  endurance helps if you can hit the outside spiker

  at 5:32 twilight—bang! the Waner brothers used to

  bat two three for the Pirates now only 182 people i

  n Pittsburgh remember them and that’s exactly proper

  . what I didn’t like about that Paris gang was tha

  t they made too much of writing but nobody can say

  that they didn’t get it down as well as possible wh

  en all the heads and eyes seemed to be looking else

  where that’s why in spite of all the romanticism at

  tached I go along not for the propaganda but for th

  e sillier reasons of luck and the way. my lobsters

  horses and lobsters and white moselle and there’s a

  good woman near me after all of the bad or the seem

  ing bad. Rachmaninoff is on now on the radio and I

  finish my second bottle of moselle. what a lovely

  emotional hound he was my giant black cat stretched

  across the rug the rent is paid the rain has stoppe

  d there is a stink to my fingers my back hurts gunn

  ed down I fall roll those lobsters examine them the

  re’s a secret there they hold pyramids drop them al

  l the women of the past all the avenues doorknobs bu

  ttons falling from shirt I never heard my mother pi

  ss and I never met your father I think that we’d ha

  ve drunk enough, properly.

  a long hot day at the track

  out at the track all day burning in the sun

  they turned it all upside down, sent in all

  the longshots. I only had one winner, a 6

  to one shot. it’s on days like that you notice

  the hoax is on.

  I was in the clubhouse. I usually meet the

  maître d’ of Musso’s in the clubhouse. that

  day I met my doctor. “where the hell you been?”

  he asked me. “nothing but hangovers lately,”

  I told him. “you come by anyhow. you don’t

  have to be sick. we’ll have lunch. I know a

  Thai place, we’ll eat Thai food. you still

  writing that porno stuff?” “yeah,” I said,

  “it’s the only way I can make it.” “let me

  sit with you,” he said, “I’ve got the 6.”

  “I’ve got the 6 too,” I said, “that means

  we’re fucked.”

  we sat down and he told me about his four

  wives: the first one didn’t want to copulate.

  the second wanted to go skiing at

  Aspen all the time. the third one was

  crazy. the fourth one was all right, they’d

  been together seven years.

  the horses came out of the gate. the doctor

  just looked at me and talked about his fourth

  wife. he was some talking doctor. I used to

  get dizzy spells listening to him as I sat on

  the edge of the examination table. but he had

  brought my child into the world and he had sliced

  out my hemorrhoids.

  he went on about his fourth wife . . .

  the race was 6 furlongs and unless it’s a pack

  of slow maidens 6 furlongs are usually run

  somewhere between one minute and nine or ten

  seconds. the one horse was 24 to one and had

  jumped out to a three length lead. the son of

  a bitch looked like he had no intention of

  stopping.

  “look,” I said, “aren’t you going to watch

  the race?”

  “no,” he said, “I can’t stand to watch, it

  upsets me too much.”

  he began on his fourth wife again.

  “hold it,” I said, “they’re coming down the

  stretch!”

  the 24 to one had 5 lengths at the wire. it

  was over.

  “there’s no logic to any of this stuff out here,”

  said the doctor.

  “I know,” I said, “but the question I want you to

  answer is: ‘why are we out here?’”

  he opened his wallet and showed me a photo of

  his two children. I told him that they were very

  nice children and that there was one race left.

  “I’m broke,” he said, “I’ve got to go. I’ve lost

  $425.”

  “all right, goodbye.” we shook hands.

  “phone me,” he said, “we’ll eat at the Thai place.”

  the last race wasn’t any better: they ran in a

  9 to one shot who was stepping up in class and

  hadn’t won a race in two years.

  I went down the escalator with the losers. it

  was a hot Thursday in July. what was my doctor

  doing at the racetrack on a Thursday? suppose

  I’d had cancer or the clap? Jesus Christ, you

  couldn’t trust anybody anymore.

  I’d read in the paper in between races

  where these kids had busted into this

  house and had beaten a 96-year-old woman

  to death and had almost beaten to death

  her 82-year-old blind sister or daughter,

  I didn’t remember. but they had taken a

  color television set.

  I thought, if they catch me out here

  tomorrow I deserve to lose. I’m not

  going to be h
ere, I don’t think I

  will.

  I walked toward my car with the next

  day’s Racing Form curled up in my

  right hand.

  the letters of John Steinbeck

  I dreamt I was freezing and when I woke up and found out

  I wasn’t freezing I somehow shit the bed.

  I had been working on the travel book that night and

  hadn’t done much good and they were taking my horses

  away, moving them to Del Mar.

  I’d have time to be a writer now. I’d wake up in the

  morning and there the machine would be looking at me,

  it would look like a tarantula; not so—it would look

  like a black frog with fifty-one warts.

  you figure Camus got it because he let somebody else

  drive the car. I don’t like anybody else driving the

  car, I don’t even like to drive it myself. well,

  after I cleaned the shit off I put on my yellow

  walking shorts and drove to the track. I parked and

  went in.

  the first one I saw was my biographer. I saw him

  from the side and ducked. he was cleanly-dressed,

  smoked a pipe and had a drink in his hand.

  last time over at my place he gave me two books:

  Scott and Ernest and The Letters of John Steinbeck.

  I read those when I shit. I always read when I shit

  and the worse the book the better the bowel movement.

  then after the first race my doctor sat down beside me.

  he looked like he had just gotten out of surgery and

  hadn’t washed very well. he stayed until after the

  8th race, talking, drinking beer and eating hot dogs.

  then he started in about my liver: “you drink so god

  damned much I want to take a look at your liver. you

  come see me now.” “all right,” I said, “Tuesday after-

  noon.”

  I remembered his receptionist. last time I had been there

  the toilet had overflowed and she had got down on the floor

  on her knees to wipe it up and her dress had pulled up

  high above her thighs. I had stood there and watched,

  telling her that Man’s two greatest inventions had been

  the atom bomb and plumbing.