What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (19 page)

at this time

I no longer have to work

the nightclubs and the universities

the bookstores

for tiny checks.

I no longer have to tell the freshman English class

at the U. of Nebraska (Omaha)

while sitting with my hangover at 11 a.m.

at a brown elevated desk

why I did it

how I did it

and what they might do in order to do

it too.

but I didn't mind the plane flights back home

with the businessmen

all of us drinking doubles

and trying not to look out past the wing

trying to relax

each happy that we were not on skid row

knowing we each had a certain talent

(so far)

which had saved us from that

(so far).

I may have to do it again some day but

right now I am where I belong:

flying over my own Mississippi River

passing over my own Grand Canyon

on schedule

no seat belt

no stewardess and

no lost luggage.

I like to think about writers like James Joyce

Hemingway, Ambrose Bierce, Faulkner, Sherwood

Anderson, Jeffers, D.H. Lawrence, A. Huxley,

John Fante, Gorki, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Saroyan,

Villon, even Sinclair Lewis, and Hamsun, even T.S.

Eliot and Auden, William Carlos Williams and

Stephen Spender and gutsy Ezra Pound.

they taught me so many things that my parents

never taught me, and

I also like to think of Carson McCullers

with her
Sad Cafe
and
Golden Eye
.

she too taught me much that my parents

never knew.

I liked to read the hardcover library books

in their simple library bindings

blue and green and brown and light red

I liked the older librarians (male and female)

who stared seriously at one

if you coughed or laughed too loudly,

and even though they looked like my parents

there was no real resemblance.

now I no longer read those authors I once read

with such pleasure,

but it's good to think about them,

and I also

like to look again at photographs of Hart Crane and

Caresse Crosby at Chantilly, 1929

or at photographs of D.H. Lawrence and Frieda

sunning at Le Moulin, 1928.

I like to see André Malraux in his flying outfit

with a kitten on his chest and

I like photos of Artaud in the madhouse

Picasso at the beach with his strong legs

and his hairless head, and then there's

D.H. Lawrence milking that cow

and Aldous at Saltwood Castle, Kent, August

1963.

I like to think about these people

they taught me so many things that I

never dreamed of before.

and they taught me well,

very well

when it was so much needed

they showed me so many things

that I never knew were possible.

those friends

deep in my blood

who

when there was no chance

gave me one.

some nights

like this night

seem to crawl down the back of one's

neck and settle at the base of the skull,

stay there

like that

like this.

it is probably a little prelude to

death,

a warm-up.

I accept.

then the mind becomes like a

movie:

I watch Dostoevsky in a small room

and he is drinking a glass of

milk.

it is not a long movie:

he puts the glass down and it

ends.

then I am back

here.

an air purifier

makes its soft sound behind me.

I smoke too much, the whole room

often turns blue

so now my wife has put in the

air purifier.

now the night has left the back

of my skull.

I lean back in the swivel

chair

pick up a bottle opener shaped

like a horse.

it's like I'm holding the whole world

here

shaped like a horse.

I put the world down,

open a paper clip and begin to clean

my fingernails.

waiting on death can be perfectly

peaceful.

it was on Western Avenue

last night

about 7:30 p.m.

I was walking south

toward Sunset

and on the 2nd floor of

a motel across the street

in the apartment in front

the lights were on

and there was this young man

he must have weighed 400 pounds

he looked 7 feet tall

and 4 feet wide

as he reached over

and rather lazily punched

a naked woman in the face.

another woman jumped up

(this woman was fully clothed)

and he gave her a whack across

the back of the head before he

turned and punched the naked one

in the face again.

there was no screaming and

he seemed almost bored by it all.

then he walked over to the window

and opened it.

he had what looked like

a small roasted chicken in his

hand.

he put it to his mouth

bit nearly half of it away

and began chewing.

he chewed for a moment or

two

then spit the bones carefully

out the window

(I could hear them

fall on the

sidewalk).

good god jesus christ almighty,

have mercy on us all!

then he looked down at me

and smiled

as I quickly moved away

ducking my head down

into the night.

I never got to where I was

driving that night after

I exhaled two 15's on the breath

meter.

they put the cuffs

on me

and I climbed into the back seat

of their squad car

for a ride to the drunk tank at

150 N. Los Angeles Street,

Parker Center.

“what's your occupation?”

the one not driving asked

me.

“I'm a writer,” I answered.

“you sure don't look like a

writer to me,” said the

cop.

“oh, I'm famous,” I

said.

“I never heard of you,”

he said.

“I never heard of you either,”

I replied.

they parked, got me out and

walked me up the ramp.

“you sure don't look like a

writer,” the cop said

again.

inside they took the cuffs

off.

I guess they were right:

I wasn't famous

and they weren't sure

what a writer should

look like.

but I knew what cops

looked like.

these were cops

and they were famous

and looked the same

all over the

world.

in a crowded drunk tank

everything was as per usual:

one toilet without a lid

and one pay

telephone, both

being used.

o yes Huxley motorcaded through southern Europe

and wrote a marvelous book about it and Lawrence

made that great painting of a man pissing

and Huxley did the peyote thing and Frieda really

gave Lawrence a
base
and Huxley said, “it's up here!”

touching his head and Lawrence said, “it's down here!”

touching his gut.

Huxley went blind you know and Lawrence had a

sixth sense when it came

to animals and

sometimes I think of Lawrence sometimes I think of

Huxley and sometimes I think of Charo with all that

hair on her head so chi-chi sexy and

then sometimes I think of 2 Mexican boys punching it

out down at the Olympic auditorium o yes

we've got a world full of dreams and sometimes

when I can't sleep

and my mind won't think of anything at all then I

spend the night

looking up at the dark ceiling.

I know horse racing.

I was there when Porterhouse beat Swaps and

that's a while back and

I've seen some more since.

so there I was in the stands

when the 8th race opened with a one-to-2 favorite on

the program.

“a lock,” the boys liked to call it

but the boys all had rundown heels on their

shoes.

the favorite was a horse they fondly called

Big Cat. actually its name was Cougar II.

he had beaten the same horses while carrying high
weight

had beaten them easily

and now in this race

each horse was to carry 126 pounds.

Cougar read one-to-2 on the program and one-to-5 on
the board.

they applauded him as he walked in the post parade.

I put a deuce on the 2nd favorite who read

8-to-one and waited on the

race.

it was a mile-and-one-half on the grass.

the gate opened and they came down the hill with

Big Cat laying up near the pace—3rd or 4th—

he looked in good position until after they

went down the backstretch and got near the final curve.

Big Cat began falling back.

what the hell was Pincay doing?

cries went up from the stands:

“he isn't going to make it!”

“my god, he isn't going to make it!”

then Big Cat seemed to come on again

he had the only red silks in the race

he was very visible out there.

maybe Pincay knew what he was doing:

he was the #1 jock on the #1

horse

but by then

Big Spruce

(at 13-to-one off a morning line of 6)

had run past the early pace setters and

was opening up

12 lengths

halfway down the stretch.

no chance for Big Cat.

Big Spruce won

easily

while Big Cat

had to wait out the photo for

3rd money.

I checked the total on Big Cat off the tote:

over one-half million dollars.

Pincay got sick and scratched out of the

9th race.

Eddie Arcaro

who carried one of the meanest whips in racing

and had ridden them all

once said:

“there's no such thing as a sure thing.”

(as the history of the world will tell you—

the easier it looks

the harder it gets).

Big Cat lost.

nobody applauded his walk back to the

barn.

in this world

you just can't lose at

one-to-5

anyhow

not with grace

no matter how many

you've won before

that

especially not in

America

nor in Paris or

Spain

nor in Munich or

Japan

nor anywhere else where

humans

dwell.

sometimes there's a crazy one in the street.

he lifts his feet carefully as he walks.

he ponders the mystery

of his own anus.

while the American dollar collapses

against the German mark

he's thinking of Bette Davis and her old movies.

it's good to bring thought to bear on things

arcane and forbidden.

if only we were crazy enough

to be willing to ignore our

mechanical and static perceptions

we'd know that a half-filled coffee cup

holds more secrets

than, say,

the Grand Canyon.

sometimes there's a crazy one walking

in the street.

he slips past

walks with a black crow on his shoulder

is not worried about alarm clocks or

approval.

however, almost everybody else is sane, knows the

answers to all the unanswerable questions.

we can park our automobiles

carve a turkey with style and

can laugh at every feeble joke.

the crazy ones only laugh when there is

no reason to

laugh.

in our world

the sane are too numerous,

too submissive.

we are instructed to live lives of boredom.

no matter what we are doing—

screwing or eating or playing or

talking or climbing mountains or

taking baths or flying to India

we are numbed,

sadly sane.

when you see a crazy one walking

in the street

honor him but

leave him alone.

stand out of the way.

there's no luck like that luck

nothing else so perfect in the world

let him walk untouched

remember that Christ also was insane.