Like my stories about cheap roominghouses were
written because I lived there.
We move on and if we’re lucky we find new
material.
Wonderment, newness and hell are everywhere.
Frank Sinatra sings his same old songs over and over
again.
That’s because he’s locked in with what made him
famous.
Fame has nothing to do with anything.
Moving on has.
I’ll be dying soon, that’s nothing extraordinary
but I won’t be able to write about it
and I’ll be glad that I didn’t go on writing about
what you find to be interesting and I do
not.
Christ, man, I don’t mean to get so holy about
all this, there’s nothing holy about writing
but it is the greatest drunken enactment that I
know of.
It was then and it is now.
Women’s asses and everything else.
I’m laughing at the darkness just like you are.
Next time you boys get oiled, put on some
Sibelius.
sure,
Henry Chinaski
ow said the cow to the fence that linked
, flounce those asshole babies,
the lepers are drunk on coconut
milk
, the pervert’s last dream was of
bacon mixed with rump
pie
, dead is dead enough
red is red enough
and the horse failed in the
queen’s face
and an hour later
she had his balls in her hands
and his head mounted between
the motorcycle handles of
Hades
, the green forests in my mind
are blind
as I reach for the toilet paper
roll
the world barks once and
vanishes
, vanilla, vanilla, vanilla,
imagine yourself in Prokofiev’s
rear pocket during a summer
squall outside the villa of a
vermouth drinking dog-
eater
, Paris is a place outside of
nowhere that used to
be
, keep getting phone calls
from totally mad people who
love me because they believe
my madness justifies theirs
which is worse than very low
grade
, pain is like a rocket, get enough
of it
and it will shoot you through
and past all nonsense
for a while
only
, the lady brought me a drink
and I brought the lady a drink
and the lady brought me a
drink
and then I brought the lady a
drink
and then the bartender
plucked out his left eye
stuck it into his mouth and
blew it to the ceiling
as a guy walked through the
door and asked,
“Is Godot in here?”
, the placenta is the hymn of
the forgotten wound
and don’t you owe me 20
bucks which I lent you during
the
Mardi Gras?
, o, damn all things and
birds and lakes and garter
belts
o, why are we so stuffed
with helium crap?
o, who stole the eyes
and put the bottle caps on
Georgia’s ass?
, why does the door open
backwards?
, hey, this stale breathing of
the stinking drums . . .
wherein come these arms?
catch that drunken lark!
, that pettifog of perfection . . .
that pellucid yawn of
burning . . .
, Christ stopped short,
the tire blew,
I opened the trunk and
the jack was
missing.
my America, 1936
you’ve got no get up and go,
said my father,
you know how much money
it took me to raise you?
you know what clothes cost?
what food costs?
you just sit in your damned
room moping on your
dead ass!
like a dead man!
what are ya gonna do when
you get out in the world?
look at Benny Halsey, he’s
an usher in a
theater!
Billy Evans sells newspapers
on the corner of Crenshaw
and Olympic
and you say you can’t
find a job!
well, the truth is, you just
don’t want a job!
I got a job!
anybody who really wants a
job can get a job!
I got a good god damned
mind to throw you out on the
street,
all you do is sit around and
mope!
I can’t believe you’re my
son!
your mother is ashamed
of you!
you’re killing your mother!
I got a good mind to beat
the shit out of you, just to
wake you up!
what?
don’t talk to me like that!
I’M YOUR FATHER!
DON’T EVER TALK TO
ME LIKE THAT AGAIN!
WHAT?
ALL RIGHT, ALL RIGHT,
OUT OF THIS HOUSE!
YOU’RE OUT!
OUT!
OUT!
MAMA, I’M THROWING
THIS SON OF A
BITCH OUT!
MAMA!
1/2/93 8:43 PM
Dear New York Quarterly:
I am a native Albino who lives with a mother with a wooden
leg and a father who shoots up. I have a parrot, Cagney, who
says, “Yankee Doodle Dandy!” each time he excretes, which is
4 or 5 times a day. I once saw J. D. Salinger. Enclosed are my
Flying Saucer Poems. I have an 18-year-old sister with a body
like you’ve never seen. Nude photos enclosed. In case my
poems are rejected, these photos are to be returned. In case of
acceptance, I or my sister can be reached at 642-696-6969.
sincerely yours,
Byron Keats
musings
the temple of my doorway is
locked.
I only agree with my critics when they are
wrong.
my father was blind in one eye, deaf in one ear
and wrong in one life.
United States postage stamps are the ugliest
in the world.
Hemingway’s characters were consistently
grim, which meant they tried too
hard.
mornings are the worst, noons are a little
better and the nights are best.
by the time you are ready to sleep you
are feeling best of all.
constant sewage spills just strengthen my
convictions.
the best thing about Immanuel Kant was
his name.
to live well is a matter of definition.
God is an invention of Man; Woman, of the
Devil.
only boring people get bored.
lonely people are avoided because they are
lonely and they are lonely because they are
avoided.
p
eople who prefer to be alone have some
damn good reasons for it.
people who prefer to be alone and lonely people
cannot be put in the same room together.
if you tape a coconut to your ass under your pants,
you can walk around like that for two weeks before
anybody asks you about that.
the best book is the one you’ve never read; the
best woman, the one you’ve never met.
if man were meant to fly he would have been
born with wings attached to his body.
I’ll admit that I have flown without them but it’s
an unnatural act, that’s why I keep asking the
stewardess for drinks.
if you sit in a dark room for some months you’ll
have some wonderful thoughts before you go
crazy.
there is hardly anything as sad as a run-over
cat.
the basis of Capitalism is to sell something for
far more than its worth.
the more you can do this, the richer you can
become.
everybody screws somebody else in a different
kind of way.
I screw you by writing words.
bliss only means forgetting for a while what is
to come.
Hell never stops it only pauses.
this is a pause.
enjoy it while you can.
storm for the living and the dead
you can’t beat me, the rain is coming through
the door and I’m at this computer while
listening to Rachmaninov on the radio,
the rain is coming right through the door,
flicks of it and I blow cigar smoke at it and
smile.
outside the door is a little balcony and there
is a chair there.
I sometimes sit in that chair when things go
bad here.
(damn the rain is coming down now!
great! beating down on my wooden chair
out there!
the trees are shaking in the rain and the
phone wires.)
I sometimes sit in that chair when things
go bad
and I drink beer out there,
watch the cars of night on the freeway,
also notice how many lights are needed
in a city, so many.
and I sit there and think, well, it may
be a down time
but at least you’re not on skid row.
you’re not even in the graveyard yet.
buck up, old boy, you’ve fought past
worse than this . . .
drink your beer.
but tonight I’m in here,
and Rachmaninov still plays for me.
when I was a young man in San
Francisco, or fairly young, I was
a bit mentally unbalanced, I thought
I was a great artist and I starved for
it.
what I mean is, Rachmaninov was
still alive then
and somehow I had saved enough
money to go see him play at the
auditorium.
only when I got in there it was
announced that he was ill
and that a replacement would
play for him.
this made me angry.
I shouldn’t have been for within
a week he was
dead.
but he’s playing for me now.
one of his own compositions,
and doing very well.
as the rain flicks into this room,
now a gale-like wind blows the
door totally open.
papers fly about the room.
there is a knock on the door,
the door behind me.
it opens.
my wife comes in.
“it’s a hurricane!” she says,
“an icy one, you’ll freeze to
death!”
“no, no,” I tell her, “I’m fine!”
she feels my arms,
they are warm.
she stands staring at me.
sometimes she wonders.
so do I.
now I am alone.
Rachmaninov has finished,
and the rain has
stopped.
and the wind.
now I’m cold.
I get up and put on a bathrobe.
I’m an old writer.
a phone bill looks at me
upside down.
the party is over.
San Pedro, 1993,
in the Lord of our
Year.
sitting here.
cover charge
Doug and I had a table up front,
one of the best, the girls were
kicking their legs high, the music
was good and the drinks were
coming.
but right in the middle of it I
saw something go by.
oh oh, I thought, that was my
death, I just saw my death go
by.
“I just saw my death go by,” I
told Doug.
“what?” he asked, “I can’t hear
you!”
“DEATH!” I screamed.
“forget it,” he said, “drink up!”
when the set was over, one of
the girls, Mandy, Doug knew
her, came over and sat down.
her head was the head of
Death.
“why are you staring at me?”
she asked.
“you remind me of something,”
I said.
“what?” she asked.
I just smiled.
“I gotta go,” she said.
“you scared her off,” said
Doug.
“she scared me,” I said.
then I looked at Doug.
his head was the head of
Death.
he didn’t know it, only I
knew it.
“what the hell you looking
at?” he asked me.
“nothing,” I told him.
“you look like you saw a
ghost,” he said, “you sick
or something?”
“I’m fine, Doug.”
“well, Jesus, I mean we
spend all this money to
have a ball and you act
like you’re at a
funeral.”
then the comedian came
on, a big fat guy with a
paper hat, he blew a
whistle and pulled a
balloon out of his butt
and said something that
I couldn’t quite hear
and everybody laughed
and laughed.
I couldn’t laugh.
I saw my death walk by.
it was the waiter.
I signaled him over to
order a drink.
all at once he turned into
this hard steel ball
and he came roaring at
me with the speed of a
bullet as I shot up
ripping the table over,
the light shattered.
some people laughed
and some screamed.
good stuff
sucking on this cigar,
drinking bottle after bottle of beer from
the people’s Republic of
China,
it’s early in the dark morning
and I am celebrating the existence of
all of us,
all of us rag-headed, doom-sucking
inhabitants of this monstrous
dung ball of
earth.
I tell you, all, one and all, that I am
proud of you
for not cutting your throats each
morning as you rise to meet it
again.
of course, some of you do, you screw
off, get out and leave us with the
stinking after-fall, leave us to handle
the mangled, the half-murdered, the
incompetent, the mad, the vile, the
masses.
but I blow blue smoke and suck on
these green bottles
in celebration of those who remain,
in whatever fashion, muddled and
incongruous but holding,
the pitcher who blazes in the bean
ball at 97 m.p.h.
the bus driver grinding his gums raw
while staying on schedule.
the wetbacks who awaken me at
7 A.M. with their leaf-blowers.
your mother, somebody’s mother,
your son, somebody’s son, some
sister, some cousin, some old fart
in a walker, all there.
look’t ’em.
I salute those who retain the treacher-
ous grip.
I open a new green bottle, flick my
dead cigar back to life with a yellow
lighter.
we need the people to clean our
latrines.
we need the mercy of breathing,
moving life
even if most of it is
incontinent.
beer from China,
think of it.
this is some A.M.
Caesar and Plato hulk in the
shadows and I love you all
for just a
moment.
now
rife; tear off the label;
the big guns have been
lowered.
nothing to do now but
sit in the sun
and ponder how you got
from the past to the
present.
now you know . . . what? that
there was nothing so special
about you
after all.
you kept getting into fights
where you didn’t
belong, you were in over your
head.
you should have eased off
more.
you took on too much and they
burned you—
too much drink, too many women,
too many books.
it didn’t matter all that much.
now you watch the minutes run
up your arms.
you hear dogs bark.
you’re tired enough to listen
now.
you’re an old man in a chair
in a yard
in the world.