What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (9 page)

tonight

I have 2 spiders clinging to a crack in the wall

and there's one fly

loose.

a new woman lies on my bed in the next room

reading the
Herald Examiner
.

she has cooked, washed the dishes

and cleaned the tub.

she has done a good job.

I sit alone in here with the spiders

and the fly.

I hear her laugh at something in the

newspaper. she seems

happy.

I don't see how those little spiders

are ever going to get that

fly.

everybody waits

everything waits.

am I the only one

who lives like

this?

bad shape. sick. can hardly hold my soul together

here in Hollywood

here on DeLongpre Ave. where the nurses live

where the experimental film makers live

where the trees live hot and sad in the sun.

here where the wheelchairs drift past

down from the home for the aged.

how long Chinaski?

how many more loves shot out of the sky?

how many more women?

how many more days and years?

pain walks through the shadows of this room.

I can feel it in my arms,

I can hear it rattling in my cheap air cooler.

I remember things and get up and walk about.

I can't stop walking

from one edge of the room to the other.

I was once a man content to be alone.

now I have been broken open,

everything has edges.

they have me—crazed and trapped.

they brought me out of myself.

they are working on me.

the onslaught is furious and relentless

and without sound.

the rivers spill over the dikes.

the sun smells like burnt cheese.

ten thousand faces on the boulevards.

I live with creatures whose existence

has nothing to do with mine.

I keep walking about this room.

I can hardly breathe.

I have given my pain a name.

I call it “Assault.”

Assault, I say, will you please go out for a walk

and leave me alone?

will you please go out for a walk and

get run over by a train?

my few friends think I'm a very funny fellow.

tell me about Chinaski, they ask my girlfriend.

oh, she says, he just sits in this big chair

and moans.

they laugh.

I make people laugh.

Assault, I say, do you want something to eat?

were you once a racehorse?

why don't you

sleep?

take a rest?

die?

Assault follows me across the room

he leaps on my shoulders and shakes me.

Lorca was shot down in the road but here

in America the poets never anger anybody.

the poets don't gamble.

their poetry has the smell of clinics.

their poetry has the smell of clinics

where people die rather than live.

here they don't assassinate the poets

they don't even notice the poets.

I walk out on the street to buy a

newspaper.

Assault follows me.

we pass a beautiful young girl on the sidewalk.

I look into her eyes, she stares

back.

you can't have her, says Assault, you are an old man,

you are a crazy old man.

I'm aware of my age, I say with some dignity.

yes, and aware of death too.

you're going to die and

you don't know where you're going

but I'm coming along with you.

you rotten bastard, I say, why are you

so fond of me?

I get a newspaper and come back.

we read it together.

ah, my companion!

we bathe together, sleep together, eat

together, we

open letters together.

we write poems together.

we read poems together.

I don't know if I am Chinaski or

Assault.

some say I love my pain.

yes, I love it so much I'd like to give it to you

wrapped in a red ribbon

wrapped in a bloody red ribbon

you can have it

you can have it all.

I'll never miss it.

I'm working on getting rid of it, believe me.

I might jam it into your mailbox

or throw it into the back seat of your car.

but now

here on DeLongpre Ave.

we have just

each other.

little dark girl with

kind eyes

when it comes time to

use the knife

I won't flinch and

I won't blame

you,

as I drive along the shore alone

as the palms wave,

the ugly heavy palms,

as the living do not arrive

as the dead do not leave,

I won't blame you,

instead

I will remember the kisses

our lips raw with love

and how you gave me

everything you had

and how I

offered you what was left of

me,

and I will remember your small room

the feel of you

the light in the window

your records

your books

our morning coffee

our noons our nights

our bodies spilled together

sleeping

the tiny flowing currents

immediate and forever

your leg my leg

your arm my arm

your smile and the warmth

of you

who made me laugh

again.

little dark girl with kind eyes

you have no

knife. the knife is

mine and I won't use it

yet.

it is 98 degrees and I am standing in the center

of the room in my shorts.

it is the beginning of September

and I hear the sound of high heels biting

into the pavement outside.

I walk to the window

as she comes by

in a knitted see-through pink dress,

long legs in nylon,

and the behind is

wide and moving and grand

as I stand there watching the sun run through

all that movement

and then she is gone.

all I can see is brush and lawn and pavement.

where did she come from?

and what can one do when it comes and leaves

like that?

it seems immensely unfair.

I turn around, roll myself a cigarette,

light it,

stand in front of my air cooler

and feel unjustifiably

cheated.

but I suppose she gives that same feeling to a

hundred men a day.

I decide not to mourn

and remain at the window to

watch a white pigeon

peck in the dirt

outside.

the son-of-a-bitch

was one of those soft liberal guys

belly like butter who

lived in a big house, he

was a professor

and he told

her:

“he'll be your

demise.”

imagine anybody saying

that: “
demise
”!

we drove in from the track,

she'd lost $57 and she said:

“we better stop for something to

drink.”

she wore an old army jacket

a baseball cap

hiking boots

and when I came out with the bottle

she twisted the top off

and took a long straight swallow

a longshoreman's suicide gulp

tilting her head back behind those dark glasses.

my god, I thought.

a nice country girl like that

who loves to dance.

her 4 mad sisters will never forgive me

and that soft left-wing son-of-a-bitch

with a belly like butter (in that big

house) was

right.

“I called up Harry and his girlfriend

answered,” she said. “so I asked her,

‘can I speak to Harry?'

and she said, ‘Harry's not here right

now.'

and I said, ‘all right,

I'll phone him back.'

and Harry's girlfriend said,

‘listen, I think I'd better tell you.

Harry's

dead.'”

my girlfriend and Harry used to be

lovers. Harry had a bad heart

and he couldn't get it up

anymore.

then she told me:

“Harry and I made a pact:

he said

when he died he would

come back from the dead and

let me know that there's

life after death.

I think I ought to tell you

what he's going to

try to do.”

“oh really?” I said.

so each morning now when we

wake up I ask her, “well, did

Harry make it back?”

I only get worried at night.

I can see Harry's ghost bigger

than the Himalayas ripping the

bedspread off us and

standing there

with his heart and

everything else in good

order.

I've always had terrible insomnia but

at least now I have something

to wait for

besides

morning.

there's Picasso

and now he's gone.

I know, it's in the papers.

there has been much about Picasso

in the papers.

we know he painted.

now there's the division of the estate.

there seem to be many little Picassos.

it will go to court, probably.

75 million dollars.

instead,

I like to think of how he worked with the brush,

doing it. wet paint, canvas, whatever.

the light. him standing there.

the process unwinding and smoking.

there's light and air and smell and the

idea, the smell of the

idea. and something to

eat. and there's a clock there.

eat the clock, Pablo. don't let the clock

eat

you.

the man leaves and his work

remains.

but to me

it's much more splendid when both

the man and the work are

here. yes, I know, I

know. 75 million dollars.

well, Picasso's gone.

immortality and fame are not always

different things. Pablo had fame,

now he has the other.

I think of old Henry Miller walking up and down

the floor in Pacific Palisades and waiting,

waiting.

we're all such good tough creative boys,

why do they let us

die?

75 million dollars.

I believe in earning one's own way

but I also believe in the unexpected

gift

and it is a wondrous thing

when a woman who has read your works

(or parts of them, anyhow)

offers her self to you

out of the blue

a total

stranger.

such an offer

such a communion

must be taken as

holy.

the hands

the fingers

the hair

the smell

the light.

one would like to be strong enough

to turn them away

those butterflies.

I believe in earning one's own way

but I also believe in the unexpected gift.

I have no shame.

we deserve one

another

those butterflies

who flutter to my tiny

flame

and

me.

when I went up to Santa Cruz to read

they had the four of us

in the restaurant first

at an elevated table

with placards:

Ginsbing, Beerlinghetti, G. Cider and Chinaski.

it wasn't even the reading yet.

it was dinner first.

it looked like the Last Supper to me.

I arrived late

sat down

a thin man

with a scarf around his throat

got up and stood over me:

“guess you can't guess who I am?”

I looked.

“no.”

“I'm G. Cider.”

“ah, hello, Garry, I'm Chinaski.”

he went back and sat

down.

Ginsbing and Beerlinghetti looked like they

were used to all the attention

we were getting.

they sat

impervious.

Jack Bitchelene hollered from the scumbag

crowd of minor poets also eating there

that night:

“hey, Chinaski, start some
shit
!”

“you
are
shit, Jack!” I hollered back,

“eat yourself and die!”

Jack loved it. he opened his dirty Brooklyn

mouth and laughed all over Santa

Cruz

his filthy grey uncombed hair

hanging in his face.

“look” I asked Beerlinghetti, “don't they

serve drinks up here

in the stratosphere?”

“we're waiting for dinner,” he informed

me politely.

I got up from the table and went

over to the bar.

“give me a vodka-7,” I told the

barkeep.

I got it down fast, ordered

a beer

and went back to the Last

Supper.

on the way a guy grabbed my arm:

“Ginsbing says he doesn't know how to

relate to you,” he said.

I sat down at the table.

dinner came.

we ate it.

then before our transportation to the reading

arrived

we were given orders:

each was to read

20 minutes.

I read 15 minutes.

Beerlinghetti read 25 minutes.

Ginsbing read 30 minutes.

G. Cider read one hour and

12 minutes.

then it was

over.

and now the others say

I am the

Judas

among us.