• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

and then you would curse him good, set him straight, so that

he would know enough to either be more careful or to

just lay there and hold it.

there was a large hill in back dense with foliage

you could see it through the barred window

and a few of the guys after being released would not go back to

skid row, they’d just walk up into that green hill where

they lived like animals.

part of it was a campground and some lived out of the

trash cans while others trekked back to skid row for meals but then

returned

and they all sold their blood each week for

wine.

there must have been 18 or 20 of them up there and

they were more or less just as happy as corporate lawyers

stockbrokers or airline

pi lots.

civilization is divided into parts, like an orange, and when you

peel the skin off, pull the sections apart, chew it, the

final result is a mouthful of pale pulp which you can either

swallow or spit

out.

some just swallow it

like the guys down at North Avenue

21.

the wrong way

luxury ocean liners

crossing the water

full of the indolent

and rich

passing from this place to that

with their hearts gone

and their guts empty

like Xmas turkeys

the great blue sky above

wasted

all that water

wasted

all those

fingers, heads, toes, buttocks,

eyes, ears, legs, feet

asleep in

their American Express Card

staterooms.

it’s like a floating tomb

going nowhere.

these are the floating dead.

yet the dead are not ugly

but the near-dead surely

are

most

surely are.

when do they laugh?

what do they think about

love?

what are they

doing

midst all that water?

and where do they seek

to go?

no wonder

Tony phoned and told me that

Jan had left him but that he was all right;

it helped him he said to think about other great men

like D. H. Lawrence

pissed off with life in general but still

milking his cow;

or to think about

T. Dreiser with his masses of copious

notes

painfully constructing his novels which then made

the very walls applaud;

or I think about van Gogh, Tony continued, a madman

who continued to make great paintings as the

village children threw rocks at his

window;

or, there was Harry Crosby and his mistress

in that fancy hotel room, dying together, swallowed by

the Black Sun;

or, take Tchaikovsky, that homo, marrying a

female opera singer and then standing in a freezing

river hoping to catch pneumonia while she went mad;

or Dos Passos, after all those left-wing books,

putting on a suit and a necktie and voting Republican;

or that homo Lorca, shot dead in the road, supposedly

for his politics but really because the mayor of that

town thought his wife had the hots for the poet;

or that other homo Crane, jumping over the rail of the boat

and into the propellor because while drunk he had

promised to marry some woman;

or Dostoyevsky crucified on the roulette wheel with

Christ on his mind;

or Hemingway, getting his ass kicked by Callaghan

(but Hem was correct in maintaining that F.

Scott couldn’t write);

or sometimes, Tony continued, I remember that guy

with syphilis who went mad and just kept rowing in

circles on some lake—a Frenchman—anyhow, he

wrote great short stories…

listen, I asked, you gonna be all

right?

sure, sure, he answered, just thought I’d phone, good

night.

and he hung up

and I hung up, thinking Jesus

Christ no wonder Jan left

him.

a threat to my immortality

she undressed in front of me

keeping her pussy to the front

while I lay in bed with a bottle of

beer.

where’d you get that wart on

your ass? I asked.

that’s no wart, she said,

that’s a mole, a kind of

birthmark.

that thing scares me, I said,

let’s call

it off.

I got out of bed and

walked into the other room and

sat on the rocker

and rocked.

she walked out. now, listen, you

old fart. you’ve got warts and scars and

all kinds of things all over

you. I do believe you’re the ugliest

old man

I’ve ever seen.

forget that, I said, tell me some more

about that