Love is a Dog from Hell (8 page)

 

you’ve got to fuck a great many women

beautiful women

and write a few decent love poems.

 

and don’t worry about age

and/or freshly-arrived talents.

 

just drink more beer

more and more beer

 

and attend the racetrack at least once a

week

 

and win

if possible.

 

learning to win is hard—

any slob can be a good loser.

 

and don’t forget your Brahms

and your Bach and your

beer
.

 

don’t overexercise.

 

sleep until noon.

 

avoid credit cards

or paying for anything on

time.

 

remember that there isn’t a piece of ass

in this world worth over $50

(in 1977).

and if you have the ability to love

love yourself first

but always be aware of the possibility of

total defeat

whether the reason for that defeat

seems right or wrong—

 

an early taste of death is not necessarily

a bad thing.

 

stay out of churches and bars and museums,

and like the spider be

patient—

time is everybody’s cross,

plus

exile

defeat

treachery

 

all that dross.

 

stay with the beer.

 

beer is continous blood.

 

a continuous lover.

 

get a large typewriter

and as the footsteps go up and down

outside your window

 

hit that thing

hit it hard

 

make it a heavyweight fight

 

make it the bull when he first charges in

 

and remember the old dogs

who fought so well:

Hemingway, Celine, Dostoevsky, Hamsun.

if you think they didn’t go crazy

in tiny rooms

just like you’re doing now

 

without women

without food

without hope

 

then you’re not ready.

 

drink more beer.

there’s time.

and if there’s not

that’s all right

too.

 

drinking 15 dollar champagne—

Cordon Rouge
—with the hookers.

 

one is named Georgia and she

doesn’t like pantyhose:

I keep helping her pull up

her long dark stockings.

 

the other is Pam-prettier

but not much soul, and

we smoke and talk and I

play with their legs and

stick my bare foot into

Georgia’s open purse.

it’s filled with

bottles of pills. I

take some of the pills.

 

“listen,” I say, “one of

you has soul, the other

looks. Can’t I combine

the 2 of you? take the soul

and stick it into the looks?”

 

“you want me,” says Pam, “it

will cost you a hundred.”

 

we drink some more and Georgia

falls to the floor and can’t

get up.

 

I tell Pam that I like her

earrings very much. Her

hair is long and a natural

red.

“I was only kidding about the

hundred,” she says.

 

“oh,” I say, “what will it cost

me?”

 

she lights her cigarette with

my lighter and looks at me

through the flame:

 

her eyes tell me.

 

“look,” I say, “I don’t think I

can ever pay that price again.”

 

she crosses her legs

inhales on her cigarette

 

as she exhales she smiles

and says, “sure you can.”

 

the flesh covers the bone

and they put a mind

in there and

sometimes a soul,

and the women break

vases against the walls

and the men drink too

much

and nobody finds the

one

but they keep

looking

crawling in and out

of beds.

flesh covers

the bone and the

flesh searches

for more than

flesh.

 

there’s no chance

at all:

we are all trapped

by a singular

fate.

 

nobody ever finds

the one.

 

the city dumps fill

the junkyards fill

the madhouses fill

the hospitals fill

the graveyards fill

nothing else

fills.

 

they’d come around and

they’d ask

“you finished your

2nd novel yet?”

 

“no.”

 

“whatsamatta? whatsamatta

that you can’t

finish it?”

 

“hemorrhoids and

insomnia.”

 

“maybe you’ve lost

it?”

 

“lost what?”

 

“you know.”

 

now when they come

around I tell them,

“yeh. I finished

it. be out in Sept.”

 

“you
finished
it?”

 

“yeh.”

 

“well, listen, I gotta

go.”

even the cat

here in the courtyard

won’t come to my door

anymore.

 

it’s nice.

 

this is my piano.

 

the phone rings and people ask,

what are you doing? how about

getting drunk with us?

 

and I say,

I’m at my piano.

 

what?

 

I’m at my piano.

 

I hang up.

 

people need me. I fill

them. if they can’t see me

for a while they get desperate, they get

sick.

 

but if I see them too often

I get sick. it’s hard to feed

without getting fed.

 

my piano says things back to

me.

 

sometimes the things are

scrambled and not very good.

other times

I get as good and lucky as

Chopin.

 

sometimes I get out of practice

out of tune. that’s

all right.

I can sit down and vomit on the

keys

but it’s my

vomit.

 

it’s better than sitting in a room

with 3 or 4 people and

their pianos.

 

this is my piano

and it is better than theirs.

 

and they like it and they do not

like it.

 

she sits up there

drinking wine

while her husband

is at work.

she puts quite

some importance

upon getting her

poems published

in the little

magazines.

she’s had two or

three of her slim

volumes of poems

done in mimeo.

she has two or

three children

between the ages

of 6 and 15.

she is no longer

the beautiful woman

she was. she sends

photos of herself

sitting upon a rock

by the ocean

alone and damned.

I could have had

her once. I wonder

if she thinks I

could have

saved her?

 

in all her poems

her husband is

never mentioned.

but she does

talk about her

garden

so we know that’s

there, anyhow,

and maybe she

fucks the rosebuds

and finches

before she writes

her poems

 

the cockroach crouched

against the tile

while I was pissing and as

I turned my head

he hauled his butt

into a crack.

I got the can and sprayed

and sprayed and sprayed

and finally the roach came out

and gave me a very dirty look.

then he fell down into

the bathtub and I watched

him dying

with a subtle pleasure

because I paid the rent

and he didn’t.

I picked him up with

some greenblue toilet

paper and flushed him

away. that’s all there

was to that, except

around Hollywood and

Western we have to

keep doing it.

they say some day that

tribe is going to

inherit the earth

but we’re going to

make them wait a

few months.