What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (7 page)

long ago he edited a little magazine

it was up in San Francisco

during the beat era

during the reading-poetry-with-jazz experiments

and I remember him because he never returned my manuscripts

even though I wrote him many letters,

humble letters, sane letters, and, at last, violent letters;

I'm told he jumped off a roof

because a woman wouldn't love him.

no matter. when I saw him again

he was in a wheelchair and carried a wine bottle to piss in;

he wrote very delicate poetry

that I, naturally, couldn't understand;

he autographed his book for me

(which he said I wouldn't like)

and once at a party I threatened to punch him and

I was drunk and he wept and

I took pity and instead hit the next poet who walked by

on the head with his piss bottle; so,

we had an understanding after all.

 

he had this very thin and intense woman

pushing him about, she was his arms and legs and

maybe for a while

his heart.

it was almost commonplace

at poetry readings where he was scheduled to read

to see her swiftly rolling him in,

sometimes stopping by me, saying,

“I don't see
how
we are going to get him up on the stage!”

sometimes she did. often she did.

then
she
began writing poetry, I didn't see much of it,

but, somehow, I was glad for her.

then she injured her neck while doing her yoga

and she went on disability, and again I was glad for her,

all the poets wanted to get disability insurance

it was better than immortality.

 

I met her in the market one day

in the bread section, and she held my hands and

trembled all over

and I wondered if they ever had sex

those two. well, they had the muse anyhow

and she told me she was writing poetry and articles

but really more poetry, she was really writing a lot,

and that's the last I saw of her

until one night somebody told me she'd o.d.'d

and I said, no, not her

and they said, yes, her.

 

it was a day or so later

sometime in the afternoon

I had to go to the Los Feliz post office

to mail some dirty stories to a sex mag.

coming back

outside a church

I saw these smiling creatures

so many of them smiling

the men with beards and long hair and wearing

bluejeans

and most of the women blonde

with sunken cheeks and tiny grins,

and I thought, ah, a wedding,

a nice old-fashioned wedding,

and then I saw him on the sidewalk

in his wheelchair

tragic yet somehow calm

looking greyer, a profile like a tamed hawk,

and I knew it was her funeral,

she had really o.d.'d

and he did look tragic out there.

 

I
do
have feelings, you know.

 

maybe tonight I'll try to read his book.

hello Bill Abbott:

I appreciate your passing around my books in

jail there, my poems and stories.

if I can lighten the load for some of those guys with

my books, fine.

but literature, you know, is difficult for the

average man to assimilate (and for the unaverage man too);

I don't like most poetry, for example,

so I write mine the way I like to read it.

 

poetry does seem to be getting better, more

human,

the clearing up of the language has something to

do with it. (w.c. williams came along and asked

everybody to clear up the language)

then

I came along.

 

but writing's one thing, life's

another, we

seem to have improved the writing a bit

but life (ours and theirs)

doesn't seem to be improving very

much.

 

maybe if we write well enough

and live a little better

life will improve a bit

just out of shame.

maybe the artists haven't been powerful

enough,

maybe the politicians, the generals, the judges, the

priests, the police, the pimps, the businessmen have been too

strong? I don't

like that thought

but when I look at our pale and precious artists,

past and present, it does seem

possible.

 

(people don't like it when I talk this way.

Chinaski, get off it, they say,

you're not that great.

but

hell, I'm not talking about being

great.)

 

what I'm saying is

that art hasn't improved life like it

should, maybe because it has been too

private? and despite the fact that the old poets

and the new poets and myself

all seem to have had the same or similar troubles

with:

forth.

 

you write me now

that the man in the cell next to yours

didn't like my punctuation

the placement of my commas (especially)

and also the way I digress

in order to say something precisely.

ah, he doesn't realize the
intent

which
is

and still make as real as possible

the word on the page. the word should be like

butter or avocados or

steak or hot biscuits, or onion rings or

whatever is really

needed. it should be almost

as if you could pick up the words and

eat them.

 

(there is some wise-ass somewhere

out there

who will say

if he ever reads this:

“Chinaski, if I want dinner I'll go out and

order it!”)

 

however

an artist can wander and still maintain

essential form. Dostoevsky did it. he

usually told 3 or 4 stories on the side

while telling the one in the

center (in his novels, that is).

Bach taught us how to lay one melody down on

top of another and another melody on top of

that and

Mahler wandered more than anybody I know

and I find great meaning

in his so-called formlessness.

don't let the form-and-rule boys

like that guy in the cell next to you

put one over on you. just

hand him a copy of
Time
or
Newsweek

and he'll be

happy.

 

but I'm not defending my work (to you or him)

I'm defending my right to do it in the way

that makes me feel best.

I always figure if a writer is bored with his work

the reader is going to be

bored too.

 

and I don't believe in

perfection, I believe in keeping the

bowels loose

so I've got to agree with my critics

when they say I write a lot of shit.

 

you're doing 19 and
¹
/
₂
years

I've been writing about 40.

we all go on with our things.

we all go on with our lives.

we all write badly at times

or live badly at times.

we all have bad days

and nights.

 

I ought to send that guy in the cell next to yours

The Collected Works of Robert Browning
for Christmas,

that'd give him the form he's looking for

but I need the money for the track,

Santa Anita is opening on the

26th, so give him a copy of
Newsweek

(the dead have no future, no past, no present,

they just worry about commas)

and have I placed the commas here

properly,

Abbott?