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sending short stories to the

Atlantic Monthly?”

she grabbed my balls and almost

twisted them off. her kisses

tasted like shitsoup.

2 women jumped up on the stage

and

carried her off into the

woods.

I could still hear her screams

as I began the next poem.

maybe, I thought, I should have

taken her on the stage in front

of all those eyes.

but one can never be sure

whether it’s good poetry or

bad acid.

now, if you were teaching creative writing, he asked, what would you tell them?

I’d tell them to have an unhappy love

affair, hemorrhoids, bad teeth

and to drink cheap wine,

avoid opera and golf and chess,

to keep switching the head of their

bed from wall to wall

and then I’d tell them to have

another unhappy love affair

and never to use a silk typewriter

ribbon,

avoid family picnics

or being photographed in a rose

garden;

read Hemingway only once,

skip Faulkner

ignore Gogol

stare at photos of Gertrude Stein

and read Sherwood Anderson in bed

while eating Ritz crackers,

realize that people who keep

talking about sexual liberation

are more frightened than you are.

listen to E. Power Biggs work the

organ on your radio while you’re

rolling Bull Durham in the dark

in a strange town

with one day left on the rent

after having given up

friends, relatives and jobs.

never consider yourself superior and/

or fair

and never try to be.

have another unhappy love affair.

watch a fly on a summer curtain.

never try to succeed.

don’t shoot pool.

be righteously angry when you

find your car has a flat tire.

take vitamins but don’t lift weights or jog.

then after all this

reverse the procedure.

have a good love affair.

and the thing

you might learn

is that nobody knows anything—

not the State, nor the mice

the garden hose or the North Star.

and if you ever catch me

teaching a creative writing class

and you read this back to me

I’ll give you a straight A

right up the pickle

barrel.

the good life

a house with 7 or 8 people

living in it

getting up the rent.

there’s a stereo never used

and a set of bongos

never used

and there are rugs over the

windows

and you smoke

as the living roaches

stumble over buttons on your

shirt and tumble

off.

it’s dark and somebody sends

out for food. you eat the food

and sleep. everybody sleeps at

once: on floors, coffeetables,

couches, beds, in bathtubs. there’s

even one in the brush outside.

then somebody wakes up and

says, “come on, let’s roll

one!”

a few others wake up.

“sure. yea. o.k.”

“all right. come on, somebody

roll a couple. let’s get it

on!”

“yeah! Let’s get it on!”

we smoke a few joints and then

we’re asleep again

except we reverse positions:

bathtub to couch, coffeetable to

rug, bed to floor, and a new one

falls into the brush

outside, and they haven’t yet

found Patty Hearst and Tim doesn’t

want to speak to

Allan.

the Greek

the guy in the front court can’t

speak English, he’s Greek, a

rather stupid-looking and

fairly ugly man.

now my landlord does some painting,

it’s not very good.

he showed the Greek one of his paintings.

the Greek went out and purchased

paper, brushes, paints.

the Greek started painting in his front

court. he leaves the paintings outside to

dry.

the Greek had never painted before—

here it comes:

a blue guitar

a street

a horse.

he’s good

in his mid-forties he’s

good.

he’s found a

toy.

he’s happy

now.

then I think, I wonder if he will get

very good?

and I wonder if I will have to watch

the rest?

the glory and the women and the women and

the women and the women and

the decay.

I can almost smell the bloodsuckers forming

to the left.

you see,

I have fastened to him already.

my comrades

this one teaches

that one lives with his mother.

and that one is supported by a red-faced alcoholic father

with the brain of a gnat.

this one takes speed and has been supported by

the same woman for 14 years.

that one writes a novel every ten days

but at least pays his own rent.

this one goes from place to place