sway with me, everything sad—
madmen in stone houses
without doors,
lepers steaming love and song
frogs trying to figure

Born like this
Into this
As the chalk faces smile
As Mrs. Death laughs
As the elevators break

having the low down blues and goin
into a restraunt to eat.
you sit at a table.
the waitress smiles at you.
she’s dumpy. her ass is too big.

Jane, who has been dead for 31 yea
never could have
imagined that I would write a scre
days together
and

In the betting line the other
day
man behind me asked,
“are you Henry
Chinaski?”

Bach, I said, he had 20 children.
he played the horses during the da
he f—ed at night
and drank in the mornings.
he wrote music in between.

the goldfish sing all night with g
and the whores go down with the st
the whores go down with the stars
I’m sorry, sir, we close at 4:30,
besides yr mother’s neck is dirty,

it sits outside my window now
like and old woman going to market
it sits and watches me,
it sweats nevously
through wire and fog and dog—bark

she’s young, she said,
but look at me,
I have pretty ankles,
and look at my wrists, I have pret
wrists

she died of alcoholism
wrapped in a blanket
on a deck chair
on an ocean
steamer.