Come On In (2 page)

my system is always the same:

keep it loose

write a great number of

poems

try with all your

heart and

don’t worry about the

bad

ones.

keep it going

keep it

hot

forget about immortality

if you ever

remembered

it.

the sound of this machine is

good.

much paper

more desire.

just

hammer away and wait for lady

luck.

what a

bargain.

hunched over this white sheet of paper

at 4 in the afternoon. I

received a letter from a young poet this morning

informing me that I was one of the most

important writers of the last

200 years.

well, now, one can’t believe that

especially if one has felt as I have

this past month,

walking about,

thinking,

surely I am going crazy,

and then thinking,

I can’t write

anymore.

and then I remember the factories,

the production lines,

the warehouses,

the time clocks,

overtime and layoffs

and flirtations with the Mexican girls

on the assembly line;

each day everything was carefully planned,

there was always something to do,

there was more than enough to do,

and if you didn’t keep up,

if you weren’t clever and swift and

obedient

you were out with the sparrows and

the bums.

writing’s different, you’re floating out there in the

white air, you’re hanging from the high-wire,

you’re sitting up in a tree and they’re working at

the trunk with a power

saw …

there’s no silk scarf about one’s neck,

no English accent,

no remittance checks from aristocratic ladies in Europe

with blind and impotent

husbands.

it’s more like a fast hockey game

or putting on the gloves with a man

50 pounds heavier and ten years

younger, or

it’s like steering a ship through the fog

with a mad damsel clinging to your

neck

and all along you know you’ve gotten away

with some quite obvious stuff, that

you’ve been given undeserved credit, for stuff

that you either wrote offhand or

hardly meant or hardly cared

about.

well, it helps to be

lucky.

yet, on the other hand, you have sometimes

done it as you always knew it should

be done, and you knew then that it was

as good as it could be done,

and that maybe you
had
done it better,

in a way,

than anybody else had done it for a long time

and

you allowed yourself to feel

good about that

for a moment or

two.

they put the pressure on you

with statements about 200 years,

and when only one individual says it, that’s all

right

but when 2 or 3 or 4 say it—

that’s when they tend to open the door to a

kookoo bin.

they tell you to give up cigarettes and

booze, and then they tell you that you

have 25 more good years ahead of you and

then

perhaps ten more years to enjoy your old

age

as you suck on

the rewards and

memories.

Patchen’s gone, we need you, man,

we all need you for that

good feeling just above the

belly button—

knowing that you are there in some small room in

northern California writing poems and

killing flies with a torn

flyswatter.

they can kill you,

the praisers can kill you,

the young girls can kill you,

as the blue-eyed boys in English depts.

who send warm letters

handwritten

on lined paper

can kill you,

and they’re all correct:

2 packs a day and the bottle

can kill you

too.

of course,

anything can kill you

and something eventually

will. all I can say is that

today

I have just inserted a new

typewriter ribbon

into this old machine

and I am pleased with the way it

works and that makes for more than just an

ordinary day, thank

you.

there’s an old movie

based on a Hemingway short story

I saw the beginning of it

again on late night /

early morning tv

but the fellow who plays

Hem

his ears aren’t right

neither are

his chin

his hair

his voice;

and there’s this lovely

wench

in the film

with perfect buns

whose role it is to

endure his precious

literary abuse

while he slowly dies in the

African jungle.

I click the movie off.

of course, I never met

Hemingway.

maybe he was like that fellow.

I hope

not.

then I look about my bedroom and

think, Jesus Jesus,

why am I so upset by this

lousy tv movie?

what did I want them to make him

look like?

act like?

he was just a journalist from

Michigan who liked to shoot

big game

and his last kill was his

biggest;

surely he would have deserved the

nice buns

and the adoring eyes

of that actress who

he never saw and

who

in real life

later

drank herself to

death.

(the actor

who plays Hem

in the film is

still around

however

but barely

functioning.)

I guess when I look at that

movie

all I can think of to say

is:

bwana, bring me a

drink.

listen, I been in the navy and I never heard cussing like you and

your girlfriend, man, and it lasts all night, every night.

we got religious people here, children, decent working folk, you’re

keeping them awake every night and look at this place! everything’s

broken, when I evict you you’ve got to pay to replace everything, buddy!

what do you mean, you don’t have no fucking money?

what do you buy all that booze with?

credit?

don’t give me that!

listen, I want it so quiet in here tonight we’ll be able to hear the

church mice pray!

what’s that?

well, up yours too, buddy!

and you wanna know what?

I saw your old lady sucking some guy’s banana in the alley!

you don’t give a damn?

what do you give a damn about?

nothing?

what kind of shit is that,
nothing
!

did you get a lobotomy somewhere along the way?

I got a good mind to wipe up the floor with you!

you say I’m the one with a lobotomy?

hey, don’t go closing the door on me, pal!

I own this fucking place!

OPEN UP, BUDDY! I’M COMING IN!

WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU LAUGHING AT?

HEY, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU LAUGHING AT?

we are in the clubhouse

3rd race, 83 degrees in June,

they have just sent in a 40-to-1 shot

in a maiden race,

the tote has clicked 3 or 4 times,

the old general feeling of futility

has arrived early

and then a girl walks by

to the window to make a bet

her skirt is slit

almost to the waist

and as she walks

this

most beautiful leg

is exposed

it sneaks out as she walks

flashes and vanishes.

every male in the clubhouse

watches that leg.

the girl is with a woman

who looks like her mother

and her mother keeps close

to the side of the skirt

that is slit,

trying to block our view.

the girl makes her bet

turns and now the leg is on

the other side

along with her mother.

the girl disappears down an

aisle to her seat

as all around us

there is a rising,

silent applause.

then the applause stops

and like forsaken children

we go back to our

Racing Forms.

this woman at the counter ahead of me

was buying four pairs of panties:

yellow, pink, blue and orange.

the lady at the register kept picking up

the panties and

counting them:

one, two, three, four.

then she counted them again:

one, two, three, four.

will there be anything else?

she asked the lady who was buying the

panties.

no, that’s it, she answered.

no cigarettes or anything?

no, that’s it.

the woman at the register

rang up the sale

collected the money

gave change

looked off into the distance

for a bit

and then she bent under the counter

and got a bag

and put the panties in this bag

one at a time—

first the blue pair, then the yellow,

then the orange, then the pink.

she looked at me next:

how are you doing today?

fair, I said.

is there anything else?

cigarettes?

all I want is what you see in front of

you.

I had hemorrhoid ointment

laxatives

and a box of paper clips.

she rang it up, took my money, made

change, bagged my things, handed them

to me.

have a nice day, she did not say.

and you too,

I said.

son, my father said, if you only had some

ambition! you have no

get up and go! no

drive!

it’s hard for me to believe that you are really

my son.

yeah, I

said.

I mean, he went on, how are you going to

make it?

your mother is worried sick and the neighbors

think you’re some kind of

imbecile.

what are you going to

do?

we can’t take care of you
all
your

life!

I’m 15 now, I told him, I won’t be around

much longer.

but
look
at you, you just sit around in your room

all day! other

boys have jobs, paper routes, Jim Stover works

as an usher at the

Bayou!

HOW IN THE HELL ARE YOU GOING TO

SURVIVE IN THIS

WORLD?

I don’t

know …

you make me SICK! sometimes, having a son like

you, I wish I was

dead.

well, he did die, he died more than 30 years

ago.

and last year I paid

$59,000 income

tax.

there are some people who will

phone a man at 7 a.m.

when he is desperately sick and

hungover.

I always greet

these idiots

with a few violent

words

and the slamming

down of the

receiver

knowing that their

morning eagerness

means that

they retired early

and thus wasted the

preceding

night

(and most likely

the preceding days, weeks and

years).

that they could

imagine

that

I’d want to

converse with

them

at 7 a.m.

is an insult

to

whatever

intelligent life

is left

in our dwindling

universe.

he hung the green Cadillac

almost straight up and down

standing on its nose

against the phone pole

next to the

All-American Hamburger

Hut.

I was

in the laundromat

with my girlfriend when

we heard the sound of it.

when we got there

the driver had

dropped out of the car

and run off.

and there was the

green Caddy

standing straight

up and down

against

the phone pole.

it was one of the most

magnificent sights

I had seen

in years:

in the 9 p.m. moonlight

it just stood there—

the people gathered

the people stood back

knowing the Caddy

could come crashing down

at any moment

but it didn’t

it just stood there

straight as an arrow

alongside

the phone pole.

how the hell

they were going to get

that down

without wrecking it

was beyond me.

my girlfriend wanted to

wait and see how

they did it

but we hadn’t

had dinner

yet

and I

talked her into

going back into the

laundromat and then

back to my place.

I was not

mechanically inclined

and it pissed

me off

to watch people

who were.

anyhow

about noon

the next day

when I went out to

buy a newspaper

the green Caddy

was gone.

there was just

an old bum

at the counter

in the All-American

having a coffee

but I had already seen

the real miracle

and I

walked back to

my place

satisfied.