they talk down through
the centuries to us,
and this we need more and more,
the statues and paintings
in midnight age
as we go along
holding dead hands.

and we would say
rather than delude the knowing:
a **** good show,
but hardly enough for a horse to eat,
and out on the sunshine street where
eyes are dabbled in metazoan faces
i decide again
that in theses centuries
they have done very well
considering the nature of their
brothers:
it's more than good
that some of them,
(closer really to the field-mouse than
falcon)
have been bold enough to try.

I was fairly drunk when it
began and I took out my bottle and used it
along the way. I was reading a week or two after
Kandel and I did not look quite as
pretty but
I brought it off and we
ended up at the Webbs, 6, 8, 10 of
us, and I drank scotch, wine, beer, tequila
and noticed a nice one sitting next to me -
one tooth missing when she smiled,
lovely, and I put my arm around her
and began loading her with *******.
when I awakened at 10 a.m. the next morning
I was in a strange house
in bed with this
woman. she was asleep but looked
familiar.
I got up and here was one kid running around in a
crib and another one running around the floor in
pajamas. I picked up a letter addressed to one
"Betsy R.", so I went back and said,
"hey, Betsy, there are kids running around all over
this place."
"oh Hank, **** it, I'm sick. I want to sleep, not
rap."
"but look, the ..."
"make yourself some
coffee."
I put the *** on and the little boy ran up in his
pajamas. I found a shirt and some pants and some
shoes and
dressed him.
then I cleaned a bottle with hot water, filled it
with milk and gave it to the kid in the
crib. he went for
it.
then I went in and squeezed her
hand. "I've got to go. are you all
right ?"
"yes, a little sick. but please don't feel
bad."
I called a yellow cab and we went back across
town.
is this what happened to
D. Thomas ? I thought.
if a man didn't think too much he could be proud of his little
conquests -
except that the women were better than we - asking nothing
as we squirted our poetry
our ******* our
***** to
them.
we were sick poets sick
people.
across town I knocked on the door of my host and
hostess.
"what happened ?" they
asked.
"nothing. got
lost."
they sat a beer in front of me
and I drank it as if I were
wordly:
a piece-of-***
any-night
anywhere
type.
"somebody got a
cigarette ?" I asked.
"sure, sure."
I lit up and asked,
"heard from Creely
lately ?"
not giving a **** whether they had or
not.

the phone rang at 1:30 a.m.
  and it was a man from Denver:
  
   "Chinaski, you got a following in
  Denver..."
    "yeah?"
   "yeah, I got a magazine and I want some
  poems from you..."
    "*******, CHINASKI!" I heard a voice
  in the background...
   "I see you have a friend,"
  I said.
   "yeah," he answered, "now, I want
  six poems..."
    "CHINASKI *****! CHINASKI'S A *****!"
  I heard the other
  voice.
    "you fellows been drinking?"
  I asked.
    "so what?" he answered. "you drink."
    "that's true..."
   "CHINASKI'S AN *******!"
    then
  the editor of the magazine gave me the
  address and I copied it down on the back
  of an envelope.
    "send us some poems now..."
    "I'll see what I can do..."
   "CHINASKI WRITES ****!"
   "goodbye," I said.
   "goodbye," said the
  editor.
    I hung up.
    there are certainly any number of lonely
  people without much to do with
  their nights.

they took my man off the street
the other day
he wore an L.A. Rams sweatshirt with
the sleeves cut
off
and under that
an army shirt
private first class
and he wore a green beret
walked very straight
he was black in brown walking shorts
hair dyed blonde
he never bothered anybody
he stole a few babies
and ran off cackling
but he always returned the infants
unharmed
he slept in the back of the
Love Parlor
the girls let him.
compassion is found in
strange places.

one day I didn't see him
then another.
I asked around.

my taxes are going to go up
again. the state's got to
house and feed
him. the cops took him
in. no
good.

the final curtain on one of the longest running
musicals ever, some people claim to have
seen it over one hundred times.
I saw it on the tv news, that final curtain:
flowers, cheers, tears, a thunderous
accolade.
I have not seen this particular musical
but I know if I had that I wouldn't have
been able to bear it, it would have
sickened me.
trust me on this, the world and its
peoples and its artful entertainment has
done very little for me, only to me.
still, let them enjoy one another, it will
keep them from my door
and for this, my own thunderous
accolade.
from The Olympia Review - 1994

I read last Saturday in the
redwoods outside of Santa Cruz
and I was about 3/4's finished
when I heard a long high scream
and a quite attractive
young girl came running toward me
long gown & divine eyes of fire
and she leaped up on the stage
and screamed: "I WANT YOU!
I WANT YOU! TAKE ME! TAKE
ME!"
I told her, "look, get the hell
away from me."
but she kept tearing at my
clothing and throwing herself
at me.
"where were you," I
asked her, "when I was living
on one candy bar a day and
sending short stories to the
Atlantic Monthly?"
she grabbed my ***** and almost
twisted them off. her kisses
tasted like shitsoup.
2 women jumped up on the stage
and
carried her off into the
woods.
I could still hear her screams
as I began the next poem.
mabye, I thought, I should have
taken her on stage in front
of all those eyes.
but one can never be sure
whether it's good poetry or
bad acid.

cimen altinda gecen 225 gunden sonra benden daha *** sey biliyor olmalisin.
kanini emip bitireli epey oldu, artik bir sepetteki kuru bir cubuksun.
bu isler boyle mi oluyor?
bu odada hala ask saatlerinin golgeleri var.
birakip gittiginde asagi yukari herseyi alip gittin.
geceleri beni ben olmaya koymayan kaplanlarin onunde diz cokuyorum.
senin sen olman asla bir daha olmayacak.
kaplanlar beni buldular ama artik umurumda bile degil.
translated by somebody

I'll settle for the 6 horse
on a rainy afternoon
a paper cup of coffee
in my hand
a little way to go,
the wind twirling out
small wrens from
the upper grandstand roof,
the jocks coming out
for a middle race
silent
and the easy rain making
everything
at once
almost alike,
the horses at peace with
each other
before the drunken war
and I am under the grandstand
feeling for
cigarettes
settling for coffee,
then the horses walk by
taking their little men
away-
it is funeral and graceful
and glad
like the opening
of flowers.

There are sketches on the walls of men and women and ducks,
and outside a large green bus swerves through traffic like
insanity sprung from a waving line; Turgenev, Turgenev,
says the radio, and Jane Austin, Jane Austin, too.
"I am going to do her portrait on the 28th, while you are
at work."
He is just this edge of fat and he walks constantly, he
fritters; they have him; they are eating him hollow like
a webbed fly, and his eyes are red-suckled with anger-fear.
He feels hatred and discard of the world, sharper than
his razor, and his gut-feel hangs like a wet polyp; and he
self-decisions himself defeated trying to shake his
hung beard from razor in water (like life), not warm enough.
Daumier. Rue Transonian, le 15 Avril, 1843. (lithograph.)
Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale.
"She has a face unlike that of any woman I have ever known."
"What is it? A love affair?"
"Silly. I can't love a woman. Besides, she's pregnant."
I can paint- a flower eaten by a snake; that sunlight is a
lie; and that markets smell of shoes and naked boys clothed,
and that under everything some river, some beat, some twist that
clambers along the edge of my temple and bites nip-dizzy. . .
men drive cars and paint their houses,
but they are mad; men sit in barber chairs; buy hats.
Corot. Recollection of Mortefontaine.
Paris, Louvre.
"I must write Kaiser, though I think he's a homosexual."
"Are you still reading Freud?"
"Page 299."
She made a little hat and he fastened two snaps under one
arm, reaching up from the bed like a long feeler from the
snail, and she went to church, and he thought now I h've
time and the dog.
About church: the trouble with a mask is it
never changes.
So rude the flowers that grow and do not grow beautiful.
So magic the chair on the patio that does not hold legs
and belly and arm and neck and mouth that bites into the
wind like the ned of a tunnel.
He turned in bed and thought: I am searching for some
segment in the air. It floats about the peoples heads.
When it rains on the trees it sits between the branches
warmer and more blood-real than the dove.
Orozco. Christ Destroying the Cross.
Hanover, Dartmouth College, Baker Library.
He burned away in his sleep.

drunk on the dark streets of some city,
it's night, you're lost, where's your
room?
you enter a bar to find yourself,
order scotch and water.
****** bar's sloppy wet, it soaks
part of one of your shirt
sleeves.
It's a clip joint-the scotch is weak.
you order a bottle of beer.
Madame Death walks up to you
wearing a dress.
she sits down, you buy her a
beer, she stinks of swamps, presses
a leg against you.
the bar tender sneers.
you've got him worried, he doesn't
know if you're a cop, a killer, a
madman or an
Idiot.
you ask for a *****.
you pour the ***** into the top of
the beer bottle.
It's one a.m. In a dead cow world.
you ask her how much for head,
drink everything down, it tastes
like machine oil.

you leave Madame Death there,
you leave the sneering bartender
there.

you have remembered where
your room is.
the room with the full bottle of
wine on the dresser.
the room with the dance of the
roaches.
Perfection in the Star ****
where love died
laughing.