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meanwhile

the revolution being over, the Russians were liberated and

dying.

Gorky with nothing to fight for, sitting in a room trying

to find phrases praising the government.

many others broken in victory.

now

now there are so many of us

but we should be grateful, for in a hundred years

if the world is not destroyed, think, how much

there will be left of all of this:

nobody really able to fail or to succeed—just

relative merit, diminished further by

our numerical superiority.

we will all be cata logued and filed.

all right…

if you still have doubts of those other golden

times

there were other curious creatures: Richard

Aldington, Teddy Dreiser, F. Scott, Hart Crane, Wyndham Lewis, the

Black Sun Press.

but to me, the twenties centered mostly on Hemingway

coming out of the war and beginning to type.

it was all so simple, all so deliciously clear

now

there are so many of us.

Ernie, you had no idea how good it had been

four de cades later when you blew your brains into

the orange juice

although

I grant you

that was not your best work.

about competition

the higher you climb

the greater the pressure.

those who manage to

endure

learn

that the distance

between the

top and the

bottom

is

obscenely

great.

and those who

succeed

know

this secret:

there isn’t

one.

a radio with guts

it was on the 2nd floor on Coronado Street

I used to get drunk

and throw the radio through the window

while it was playing, and, of course,

it would break the glass in the window

and the radio would sit out there on the roof

still playing

and I’d tell my woman,

“Ah, what a marvelous radio!”

the next morning I’d take the window

off the hinges

and carry it down the street

to the glass man

who would put in another pane.

I kept throwing that radio through the window

each time I got drunk

and it would sit out there on the roof

still playing—

a magic radio

a radio with guts,

and each morning I’d take the window

back to the glass man.

I don’t remember how it ended exactly

though I do remember

we finally moved out.

there was a woman downstairs who worked in

the garden in her bathing suit

and her husband complained he couldn’t sleep nights

because of me

so we moved out

and in the next place

I either forgot to throw the radio out the window

or I didn’t feel like it

anymore.

I do remember missing the woman who worked in the

garden in her bathing suit,

she really dug with that trowel

and she put her behind up in the air

and I used to sit in the window

and watch the sun shine all over that thing

while the music played.

the egg

he’s 17.

mother, he said, how do I crack an

egg?

all right, she said to me, you don’t have to

sit there looking like that.

oh, mother, he said, you broke the yolk.

I can’t eat a broken yolk.

all right, she said to me, you’re so tough,

you’ve been in the slaughter houses, factories,

the jails, you’re so goddamned tough,

but all people don’t have to be like you,

that doesn’t make everybody else wrong and you

right.

mother, he said, can you bring me some cokes

when you come home from work?

look, Raleigh, she said, can’t you get the cokes

on your bike, I’m tired after

work.

but, mama, there’s a hill.

what hill, Raleigh?

there’s a hill,

it’s there and I have to pedal over

it.

all right, she said to me, you think you’re so

goddamned tough. you worked on a railroad track

gang, I hear about it every time you get drunk:

“I worked on a railroad track gang.”

well, I said, I did.

I mean, what difference does it make?

everybody has to work somewhere.

mama, said the kid, will you bring me those

cokes?

I really like the kid. I think he’s very

gentle. and once he learns how to crack an

egg he may do some

unusual things. meanwhile

I sleep with his mother

and try to stay out of

arguments.

a killer gets ready

he was a good one

say 18, 19,

a marine

and every time

a woman came