in junior high school Big Max was a problem. we’d be sitting during lunch hour eating our peanut butter sandwiche… and potato chips.

in the slow Mexican air I watched… and they cut off his ear, and his… no more terror than a rock. driving back the next day we stopp… and watched the golden red and blu…

our marriage book, it says. I look through it. they lasted ten years. they were young once.

Two mornings later, at 4 am, somebody beat on the door. I let Tammie in. She sat down and I opened a couple of beers. “I’ve got bad breath, I have these two bad teeth. You can’t kiss me...

watch you walking with your machin… ah, you’re too stupid to be cut li… you’re too stupid to let anything… the girls won’t use their knives o… they don’t want to

Graduation Day. We filed in with our caps and gowns to “Pomp and Circumstance.” I suppose that in our three years we must have learned something. Our ability to spell had probably impro...

you’ve got to fuck a great many wo… beautiful women and write a few decent love poems. and don’t worry about age and/or freshly-arrived talents.

he got knifed in broad daylight, c… holding his hands over his gut, dr… on the pavement. nobody waiting in line left their… he made it to the Mission doorway,…

you shoulda been at this party, I know you hate parties but you seem to be at most of them… anyhow, I took my girl, you know her—

then there was the time in New Orleans I was living with a fat woman, Marie, in the French Quarter and I got very sick.

I had to take a shit but instead I went into this shop to have a key made. the woman was dressed

a poem is a city filled with stree… filled with saints, heroes, beggar… filled with banality and booze, filled with rain and thunder and p… drought, a poem is a city at war,