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art-form.

if you can’t have any luck with one thing you

try another.

of course, I had been practicing on the

drinking-form

since the age of

15.

and there was much competition

in that field

also.

it was a world full of drunks and writers and

drunk writers.

and so

I became a starving drunk instead of a starving

writer.

the best thing was the instant

result.

and I soon became the biggest and

best drunk in the neighborhood and

maybe the whole

city.

it sure as hell beat sitting around waiting for

those rejection slips from The New Yorker and The

Atlantic Monthly.

of course, I never really considered quitting the

writing game, I just wanted to give it a

ten year rest

figuring if I got famous too early

I wouldn’t have anything left for the stretch run

like I have now, thank

you,

with the drinking still thrown

in.

garbage

I had taken a tremendous beating,

I had chosen a real bull, and because of

the girls and for himself and just because of his

brutal escaping energy

he had almost murdered me:

I learned later

that even after I was out

he had kicked my head again and

again

and then had emptied several garbage cans

over me

and then they had left me there

in that alley.

I was the guy from out of town.

it was around 6 a.m. on a Sunday

morning when I came

around.

my face was a mass of

bruises, scabs, clots, bumps, lumps, my lips

thick and numb, my eyes almost swollen

shut

but I got to my feet and began

walking;

I could see traces of the sun, houses, the shaking

sidewalk as I

moved toward my room

then I heard shuffling sounds from the

center of the street

and I forced my eyes to

focus and saw this

man staggering

his clothing ripped and bloody

he smelled of death and darkness

but he kept moving forward

down the middle of the street

as if he had been walking for

miles

from some event so ugly that

the mind itself might refuse to accept it

as part of life.

my impulse was to help him

and I stepped off the

curbing

and moved toward him.

he couldn’t see me, he moved forward

looking for somewhere to go,

anywhere, and

I saw one of his eyes hanging

out of the socket,

dangling.

I backed away.

he was like a creature not of the

earth.

I let him go

by.

I heard him moving away

behind me

those blind steps

lurching, in

agony,

senselessly

alone.

I got back on the

sidewalk.

I got back to my

room.

I got myself to the

bed.

fell face up

the ceiling up there above me,

I waited.

my vanishing act

when I got sick of the bar

and I sometimes did

I had a place to go:

it was a tall field of grass

an abandoned

graveyard.

I didn’t consider this to be a

morbid pastime.

it just seemed to be the best

place to be.

it offered a generous cure to

the vicious hangover.

through the grass I could see

the stones,

many were tilted

at strange angles

against gravity

as though they must

fall

but I never saw one

fall

although there were many of those

in the yard.

it was cool and dark

with a breeze

and I often slept

there.

I was never

bothered.

each time I returned to the bar

after an absence

it was always the same with

them:

“where the hell you

been? we thought you

died!”

I was their bar freak, they needed me

to make themselves feel

better.

just like, at times, I needed that

graveyard.

let’s make a deal

in conjunction with

these rivers of shit

that keep rolling through my brain, Captain

Walrus, I can only say that I hardly understand

it and would say

any number of HAIL MARYS

to put a stop to it—

I’d even go back to living with that whore with the

heart of brass just

to keep these rivers of shit from rolling through my

brain, Captain Walrus, but

of course

I would never stop playing the horses or

drinking

but

Captain

to keep these rivers from flowing

I’d promise to never

eat eggs again and

I’d shave my head and my balls, I’d live in

the state of Delaware and I’d even

force myself to sit through any movie acted in by

any member of the Fonda

family.

think about it, Captain Walrus, the