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who kept touching him for luck, and

laughing.

nobody had any luck. the whore is gone

too.

I guess nothing ever works for us. we’re fools, of course—

bucking the inside plus a 15 percent take,

but how are you going to tell a dreamer

there’s a 15 percent take on the

dream? he’ll just laugh and say,

is that all?

I miss those

sparks.

human nature

it has been going on for some time.

there is this young waitress where I get my coffee

at the racetrack.

“how are you doing today?” she asks.

“winning pretty good,” I reply.

“you won yesterday, didn’t you?” she

asks.

“yes,” I say, “and the day before.”

I don’t know exactly what it is but I

believe we must have incompatible

personalities. there is often a hostile

undertone to our conversations.

“you seem to be the only person

around here who keeps winning,”

she says, not looking at me,

not pleased.

“is that so?” I answer.

there is something very strange about all

this: whenever I do lose

she never seems to be

there.

perhaps it’s her day off or sometimes she works

another counter?

she bets too and loses.

she always loses.

and even though we might have

incompatible personalities I am sorry for

her.

I decide the next time I see her

I will tell her that I am

losing.

so I do.

when she asks, “how are you doing?”

I say, “god, I don’t understand it,

I’m losing, I can’t hit anything, every horse

I bet runs last!”

“really?” she asks.

“really,” I say.

it works.

she lowers her gaze

and here comes one of the largest smiles

I have ever seen, it damn near cracks

her face wide open.

I get my coffee, tip her well, walk

out to check the

toteboard.

if I died in a flaming crash on the freeway

she’d surely be happy for a

week!

I take a sip of coffee.

what’s this?

she’s put in a large shot of cream!

she knows I like it black!

in her excitement,

she’d forgotten.

the bitch.

and that’s what I get for lying.

the trash men

here they come

these guys

gray truck

radio playing

they are in a hurry

it’s quite exciting:

shirt open

bellies hanging out

they run out the trash bins

roll them out to the fork lift

and then the truck grinds it upward

with far too much sound…

they had to fill out application forms

to get these jobs

they are paying for homes and

drive late model cars

they get drunk on Saturday night

now in the Los Angeles sunshine

they run back and forth with their trash bins

all that trash goes somewhere

and they shout to each other

then they are all up in the truck

driving west toward the sea

none of them know

that I am alive

REX DISPOSAL CO.

a gold pocket watch

my grandfather was a tall German

with a strange smell on his breath.

he stood very straight

in front of his small house

and his wife hated him

and his children thought him odd.

I was six the first time we met

and he gave me all his war medals.

the second time I met him

he gave me his gold pocket watch.

it was very heavy and I took it home

and wound it very tight

and it stopped running

which made me feel bad.

I never saw him again

and my parents never spoke of him

nor did my grandmother

who had long ago

stopped living with him.

once I asked about him

and they told me

he drank too much

but I liked him best

standing very straight

in front of his house

and saying, “hello, Henry, you

and I, we know each

other.”

talking to my mailbox…

boy, don’t come around here telling me you

can’t cut it, that

they’re pitching you low and inside, that

they are conspiring against you,

that all you want is a chance but they won’t

give you a

chance.

boy, the problem is that you’re not doing

what you want to do, or

if you’re doing what you want to do, you’re

just not doing it

well.

boy, I agree:

there’s not much opportunity, and there are

some at the top who are

not doing much better than you

are

but

you’re wasting energy haranguing and

bitching.

boy, I’m not advising, just