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later.) the girls joke about my ugly face.

I smoke. after this I need some profundities but

Buddha doesn’t help much.

Buffy gets up and shakes her behind at me:

“you can’t have me, Chinaski, you’re too old, you’re too

ugly.”

well, you see, it’s difficult for me. Lila and I finish

our coffees and climb down the green steps to the

blue-green

swimming pool. it is 11 a.m. India and Pakistan are at

war. we get into my smashed ’62 Comet. it

starts. well, we can go to the races, we can screw again,

we can sleep, we can have a Mexican marriage, we can argue

and split or she can read to me about fresh murders in the

Herald-Examiner.

it ends up

we argue and split and I forget to go get

Buffy her pack of

cigarettes.

(uncollected)

magical mystery tour

I am in this low-slung sports car

painted a deep, rich yellow

driving under an Italian sun.

I have a British accent.

I’m wearing dark shades

an expensive silk shirt.

there’s no dirt under my

fingernails.

the radio plays Vivaldi

and there are two women with

me

one with raven hair

the other a blonde.

they have small breasts and

beautiful legs

and they laugh at everything I

say.

as we drive up a steep road

the blonde squeezes my leg

and nestles closer

while raven hair

leans across and nibbles my

ear.

we stop for lunch at a quaint

rustic inn.

there is more laughter

before lunch

during lunch and after

lunch.

after lunch we will have a

flat tire on the other side of

the mountain

and the blonde will change the

tire

while

raven hair

photographs me

lighting my pipe

leaning against a tree

the perfect background

perfectly at peace

with

sunlight

flowers

clouds

birds

everywhere.

(uncollected)

the last generation

it was much easier to be a genius in the twenties, there were

only 3 or 4 literary magazines and if you got into them

4 or 5 times you could end up in Gertie’s parlor

you could possibly meet Picasso for a glass of wine, or

maybe only Miró.

and yes, if you sent your stuff postmarked from Paris

chances of publication became much better.

most writers bottomed their manuscripts with the

word “Paris” and the date.

and with a patron there was time to

write, eat, drink and take drives to Italy and sometimes

Greece.

it was good to be photo’d with others of your kind

it was good to look tidy, enigmatic and thin.

photos taken on the beach were great.

and yes, you could write letters to the 15 or 20

others

bitching about this and that.

you might get a letter from Ezra or from Hem; Ezra liked

to give directions and Hem liked to practice his writing

in his letters when he couldn’t do the other.

it was a romantic grand game then, full of the fury of

discovery.

now

now there are so many of us, hundreds of literary magazines,

hundreds of presses, thousands of titles.

who is to survive out of all this mulch?

it’s almost improper to ask.

I go back, I read the books about the lives of the boys

and girls of the twenties.

if they were the Lost Generation, what would you call us?

sitting here among the warheads with our electric-touch

typewriters?

the Last Generation?

I’d rather be Lost than Last but as I read these books about

them

I feel a gentleness and a generosity

as I read of the suicide of Harry Crosby in his hotel room

with his whore

that seems as real to me as the faucet dripping now

in my bathroom sink.

I like to read about them: Joyce blind and prowling the

bookstores like a tarantula, they said.

Dos Passos with his clipped newscasts using a pink typewriter

ribbon.

D.H. horny and pissed off, H.D. being smart enough to use

her initials which seemed much more literary than Hilda

Doolittle.

G. B. Shaw, long established, as noble and

dumb as royalty, flesh and brain turning to marble. a

bore.

Huxley promenading his brain with great glee, arguing

with Lawrence that it wasn’t in the belly and the balls,

that the glory was in the skull.

and that hick Sinclair Lewis coming to light.