Screams From the Balcony (20 page)

the small pamphlets and books of my poems are out of print. You might find a copy of
It Catches My Heart in Its Hands
in the New York public library. I know there was one in the New Orleans library when I was down there. And I like an old man watching a kid run through a broke field I could not help being somewhat proud that the fucking card showed that the book had been in and out, in and out, continually, almost never resting on the shelf. Maybe N.Y. doesn’t have a copy. I haven’t checked L.A. This book is my selected poems from 1955 to 1963. I began writing poetry at age 35.

I was down in New Orleans last month helping Jon Webb put together 3,000 copies of
Crucifix in a Deathhand
. Yeah, I helped him a lot; I helped him get drunk. Anyhow, the book will be distributed by Lyle-Stuart Inc., New York, I don’t know exactly when. Contains all newly written poems, none of which were submitted to the magazines. Why don’t you write Jon Webb, 1109 Rue Royal, New Orleans, 16, Louisiana, and ask him how to get holda a
Crucifix
? Book about finished. Large, wild, and beautiful format, cover and paintings by Noel Rockmore.

I lived in the Village some time back. was disgusted. no men burning in agony, dreaming knives. just con-babies. berets, goats, sipping tea by the window, or whatever they were sipping, I never went in. they looked too comfortable, they looked too money, too phoney, sure. sitting there with their cunt pretending they were Picasso. don’t ever pretend. be McNamara without the band. there I go, handing advice like God. an old fuck on a rainy day lighting up a Parliament and dreaming about the slow and easy fifth of
CUTTY
I am going to drink this Sunday while my mind draws designs on the pavements and the butts of all the beautiful women who don’t even know that I am alive. yet, there aren’t many beautiful women. sows. lots of pavement, tho. look, I’ve got to go out into the night. hope I’ve answered some questions.

[To Ann Menebroker]

April 10, 1965

F. and M.L. have been out of town for 2 weeks and must suppose F. will get to your letter with response after she settles down to the sanctified break of living with me, ya.

Crucifix
being collated now, but no price set, and this type of thing done by Lyle-Stuart who will distribute. I hope he doesn’t get hooked for the 3,000 copies—I can’t buy them. art work by Noel Rockmore, vast cover and 4 plates inside. Large book, like children’s fairy tale thing, long wide pages, 100, I am lucky again to fall down into the center of this thing.

meanwhile there is toothache, insomnia, hangover; my wildly staring eye thru the slow drowning. Have been reading
That Summer in Paris
which somebody mailed me. waste. unless you wonder what Hemingway did in the bathroom of his soul.

[To Douglas Blazek]

April 12, 1965

[* * *] anyhow, Sheri M. [* * *] gets pissed whenever she believes I mention her in a poem. she says I talk out of school or something like that. One of her boys came down from Frisco and knocked on my door and came in and said they were going to sue because I had used his lady in one of my poems. I was in there with my whore and I was laying drunk on the floor, and I said, ok, if you’re going to sue that’s the way it works, only I don’t have any money, I don’t even have a jockstrap. then I turned on a tape I had made while drunk and I layed on the floor listening to my quips and madness and singing, and soon he gave up and went away. I even offered to get him drunk but he wouldn’t drink. I guess Sheri thot him a pretty boy; she drew pictures of him all over her magazines, adding curls to his head. But act. he only had regular features; satisfied & blank look; no coal burning. dead, really dead, pal. Anyhow, Sheri I think was for a while sending my letters to somebody at Yale who was sticking them into a tube that was going to be buried—Pearson, I think his name was—and so there go those letters—buried along with a lot of other modern contrivance. Anyhow, Sheri said her Chinaman husband enjoyed my letters. that’s something. S. always trying to get me to change my style to the all-embracing, classical style—the only way to be immortal and so forth. She sent books by H.D. and even had me write H.D. while she (H.D.) was dying. Well, that’s all right. But there are enough of them writing the way Sheri wants me to write. I’ve got to go my way. If I can’t reach the gods at least I can see the dirt under my toenails and dream of sleeping with 14 year old girls. Jesus, save me. But not right away.

[* * *]

[To Tom McNamara]

April 16, 1965

Typewriter shot thru 20 times and now dead. Must get another: feel like a man without a cock having a spiritual hard-on and nothing to ram it home with. I can’t spin anything without the keys, the keys have a way of cutting out the fat and retaining the easiness.

If you want to run the letter fine but forget essay a while. A man can go drunk on essays & handing out advice & being a master critic (T. S. Eliot, so forth). I’ve got to go easy because I still don’t know where I am. Guy hit me for a 20 less than an hour ago telling me his word was his bond. If I had back all the money I’ve loaned I could buy ½ dozen typewriters (new) today instead of writing with this fig leaf stem & liquid shoe polish.

You speak of certain names, and I guess we all like the lions who cut the way, yet I met a friend (backer) of one of these lions last year, and I’d rather be a dead cat than feed from certain hands. He told dull jokes all night, drank my beer and argued with his wife. then he tried to slip me a ten. “I’d like you to meet X.” “No, thanks,” I told him, “I’ve read his books.” Then his wife at the door (to me): “You’re so quiet. You never say anything.”

Hell no, they didn’t give me a chance.

Reminds me of when I was in New Orleans last month and 2 college profs drove some miles in to see me and then argued with each other into the night about their degrees and how they were going to take over the university magazine. Finally one of them noticed me, turned to me and said, “My balls hurt!” I told him that was too bad and then they went on with their talk.

Really, tho, I guess the gods let me off easy. My balls didn’t hurt once all night.

Then, you speak of my having starved. Of course, you know that starving doesn’t create Art. It creates many things but mainly it creates
TIME
, and I don’t mean the paper bit. If you’re good and you have time you have a chance, and if you’re good and you don’t have time you won’t be good very long. I think there is kind of an area of distillation you have to go thru and once this settles there isn’t much they can do with you, although you can do it to yourself (see Hemingway, S. Anderson and so on…). [* * *]

[To Douglas Blazek]

April 17, 1965

[* * *] the old typewriter finally fell apart to unrepairable stage. like the death of an old friend, all the fire we went thru, the drunks, the whores, the rejects, and the occasional home run. I have not learned how to handle this typer yet—it is a very cheap second hand and I see why now—you’ve got to hit the keys just right or it won’t work. I hope you can read the enclosed manuscript. [* * *]

I get these letters on the essay I wrote for
Ole
#2 and they seem to think I said something; I am a fucking oracle (oriol?) for the
LOST
or something, is what they tell me. that’s nice. but
I AM THE LOST
.

going on to the collection of letters you were talking about; some of them may be thrown away and some of the people might be pissed at me, and some of them may be too possessive, but I think most of them pretty good people and you ought to get some co-operation. sure, edit wherever you wish, edit out dull parts, print partials or what you think entertaining. no, I needn’t see what you’re going to print beforehand. that’s waste. I am not ashamed of anything I have written in letters. you print what you want and how you want. and I look forward to this bit and hope you can work it out. you see, I wonder what I said too. [* * *]

[To Douglas Blazek]

April 21 or 22, [1965]

have not heard from you on first part of
Confessions of a Man Insane Enough to Live with Beasts
, but here is second part which I wrote tonight. naturally, I hope it goes. please let me know soon.

tired now. got your letter today which I will get to soon; I mean, answer soon. feel slugged now, and am closing.

[To Tom McNamara]

April 24, 1965

Letters? god damn, man, let’s be careful. all right at outset, esp. for tightheads who have been working in sonnet form, writing critical articles, so forth; it gives them (letters) the facility and excuse for wallowing in the easiness of their farts and yawns without pressure. really, writing letters are easy: nobody likes form, and I know this—that’s why I discard a lot of it in my poetry (or, I think I do) (form is a paycheck for learning to turn the same screw that has held things together). so now we start with the letter as an o.k. thing, and then the next thing you know instead of being an o.k. thing, a natural form, it simply becomes another form for the expulsion of the creative, artistic, fucked-up Ego, like maybe this letter is, I don’t deny it, I don’t deny being a part of the poison, and soon a lot of the boys end up working as hard or harder on the letters than they do on their poems. wherever the payoff lies, what?

now look, for laughs and for instance, I’ve heard a certain old-timer who’s never quite made it with his work but who has always had a finger up some big boy’s crotch or been in some Movement. maybe I’m being unkind. anyhow he has seemed monied and has seemed able to recognize a talent before the big publishers puke over it and kill it with circulation, publicity and $$$. what I mean is, I now hear this man is going to issue a collection of his
LETTERS
. now, how in the hell are you going to issue a collection of your
own
letters unless you keep carbons? and if you keep carbons, aren’t you more or less writing a literary essay type of precious thing, and keeping a hunk of it yourself because it’s so good? or if you don’t do that then it’s: “Dear Paul: I hope you have kept all the letters I’ve written you over the past fifteen years as I am now issuing a collection of my collected letters and, of course, would like to include mine to you…. hope you still have them, and, of course I would o.k. any deletions you would care to make…”

I used to think of a letter as something like this: “Dear Paul: Sure hot today and have drank a lot of beer. Martha had a wisdom tooth pulled yesterday. The Dodgers lost yesterday. they just can’t get their pitchers any runs…”

yet I find most literary letters duller than this, and this includes the letters of D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Wolfe, or any I can remember, and, if I have missed some good ones somewhere, let me know.

I had to pick up a cheap 2nd hand portable and as you can see I have trouble controlling it but as long as some of it can be made out, all right. and I sure hope it hits through o.k. to this nice fresh carbon I have stuck underneath.

yes, the
LSD
is the fading rage, stuff written under
LSD
, about
LSD
, my god they all do the
same
thing at the same time—
THE IMPROPER PROPER THING
, if you know what I mean, and always in the concert of the safety of each other…. sure, if you want to use parts of my letters, go ahead, why the hell do you think I write them?

somebody in the neighborhood here has his stereo turned up as loud as possible and I do believe because he is enjoying it he also presumes everybody else is enjoying it. it is really only a half-hearted masturbation of music and it does make me ill. I’m not saying I’m a sensitive type but I keep thinking of the continuous intrusions that keep slapping against us and it is these intrusions: the small and continuous and everyday ones that finally grind us down either into acceptance or insanity. intrusions are many and varied, like say a dead face, urinal murdered face, hanging onto a living body and looking down into a bag of apples the hand fills in a supermarket as you walk past.

there’s hardly any way out, even after you’ve seen enough, and after a number of years you have seen enough, but you can only close a door and pull the blinds for so long before they come get you: the landlord, your wife, the public health inspector, the men from the insane asylum.

now toothache, tooth breaking off in back, I have about 7 stubs of teeth that need yanking but I am a coward and no money and ashamed of the condition I have allowed my jaws to crash to. I think of the dead down there in their caskets or what’s left of their caskets. how are the teeth of the dead? think of all those jaws down there! think of Shakespeare gaping open, unable to drink a beer.

maybe it’s because it’s so hot today I do not feel well or maybe it’s because I have to go to
WORK
and it’s Saturday and I’d rather get drunk, but they tell me I’ve missed too many days already, and my girl-child has these blue eyes and she thinks I can make it, but some day I’m going to lay it down again and see what happens, watch the walls come down like bombardment, watch the landlord snarl, listen to the lady from relief insult me, roll my own cigarettes, put ice in the cheap wine to kill the gaseous taste…the defense and demise of myself comes above all—my choice to fall and not do, stare at ceilings, beg for bread, exist like a pigeon, a sack of manure, a flower under the window with 17 days to live.

I see the flies in the green leaves and I think,

it’s strange, they’ve never read Richard Aldington…