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• Classic-Fiction

plum is in the pudding and the parasol bends to

the West wind

I’ve got to do something about all

this…

it seems like it never

stops.

each man’s hell is in a different

place: mine is just up and

behind

my ruined

face.

16-bit Intel 8088 chip

with an Apple Macintosh

you can’t run Radio Shack programs

in its disc drive.

nor can a Commodore 64

drive read a file

you have created on an

IBM Personal Computer.

both Kaypro and Osborne computers use

the CP/M operating system

but can’t read each other’s

handwriting

for they format (write

on) discs in different

ways.

the Tandy 2000 runs MS-DOS but

can’t use most programs produced for

the IBM Personal Computer

unless certain

bits and bytes are

altered

but the wind still blows over

Savannah

and in the Spring

the turkey buzzard struts and

flounces before his

hens.

zero

sitting here watching the second hand on the TIMEX go around and

around…

this will hardly be a night to remember

sitting here searching for blackheads on the back of my neck

as other men enter the sheets with dolls of flame

I look into myself and find perfect emptiness.

I am out of cigarettes and don’t even have a gun to point.

this writer’s block is my only possession.

the second hand on the TIMEX still goes around and

around…

I always wanted to be a writer

now I’m one who can’t.

might as well go downstairs and watch late night tv with the wife

she’ll ask me how it went

I’ll wave a hand nonchalantly

settle down next to her

and watch the glass people fail

as I have failed.

I’m going to walk down the stairway now

what a sight:

an empty man being careful not to trip and bang his empty

head.

putrefaction

of late

I’ve had this thought

that this country

has gone backwards

4 or 5 decades

and that all the

social advancement

the good feeling of

person toward

person

has been washed

away

and replaced by the same

old

bigotries.

we have

more than ever

the selfish wants of power

the disregard for the

weak

the old

the impoverished

the

helpless.

we are replacing want with

war

salvation with

slavery.

we have wasted the

gains

we have become

rapidly

less.

we have our Bomb

it is our fear

our damnation

and our

shame.

now

something so sad

has hold of us

that

the breath

leaves

and we can’t even

cry.

I’ll take it…

maybe I’m going crazy, that’s all right

but these poems keep rising to the top of my

head with more and more

force. now

after the oceans of booze that I have

consumed

it would only seem that attrition would

be my rightful reward as I continue to

consume—while

the madhouses, skidrows and graveyards are

filled with the likes of

me—

yet each night as I sit down to this machine

with my bottle

the poems flare and jump out, on and

on—roaring in the glee of

easy power: 65 years

dancing—my mouth curling into a

tiny grin

as these keys keep meting out a

substantial energy of cock-

eyed miracle.

the gods have been kind to me through this

life-style that would have killed

an ox of a man

and I’m no ox of a

man.

I sensed from the beginning, of

course, that there was a strange gnawing

inside of me

but I never dreamed this

luck

this absolute shot of

grace

my death will at most seem

an

afterthought.

supposedly famous

not much to hang onto in this early morning growling,

my wife, poor dear, downstairs,

I am at the racetrack all day and

up here all night with the bottle and

this machine.

my wife, poor dear, may she find her place

in heaven.

then too

the few people that I have

known, the people I thought had that

little extra flare

that inventive humanity, well, they

dissolved

but

being a natural loner

I am not over-

distraught—

there are still my 5

cats: Ting, Ding, Beeker, Bleeker and

Blob.

not much to hang on to in this early morning growling.

I am now a

supposedly famous

writer

influencing hordes of

typists.

would

that I could

laugh

at all

this.

Fame is the last whore, all the others are

gone.

well, the competition ain’t been

much