bet the horses
again
what am I doing standing out here
betting the horses?
anybody can go to the racetrack but
not everybody can
write a sonnetâ¦
the racetrack crowd is the lowest of the breed
thinking their brains can outfox the
15 percent take.
what am I doing here?
if my publisher knew I was blowing my royalties,
if those guys in San Diego
and the one in Detroit who send me money
(a couple of fives and a ten)
or the collector in Jerome, Arizona
who paid me for some paintings,
if they knew
what would
they think?
jesus christ, Iâm playing the starving poet who is
creating great Art.
I walk up to the bar with my girlfriend,
sheâs a handsome creature in hotpants
with long dark hair,
I order a scotch and water,
she orders a screwdriver
jesus christ
I donât have a chance
did Vallejo, Lorca and
Shelley have to go through
this?
I drink some of the scotch and
water and think,
the proper mix of the woman and the poem
is infinite Art.
then I sit down with my
Racing Form
and get back
to work.
hanging there on the wall
I used to look across the room
and think,
this female will surely do me
in
and itâs not worth
it.
but Iâd do nothing about it
and I wasnât
lonely.
it was more like a space to
fill in with something;
like on a canvas,
you can keep painting something on it
even if it isnât very
good.
âwhat are you thinking
about, you bastard?â she would
say.
âpainting.â
âpainting? you nuts?
pour me a drink!â
and I would, and then Iâd brush her
in, drink in hand, sitting
in a chair, legs crossed, kicking
her high-heeled shoes.
Iâd brush her in, bad tempered,
spoiled, loud.
a painting nobody would ever
see
except me.
the hookers, the madmen and the doomed
today at the track
2 or 3 days after
the death of the
jock
came this voice
over the speaker
asking us all to stand
and observe
a few moments
of silence. well,
thatâs a tired
formula and
I donât like it
but I do like
silence. so we
all stood: the
hookers and the
madmen and the
doomed. I was
set to be displeased
but then
I looked up at the
TV screen
and there
standing silently
in the paddock
waiting to mount
up
stood the other jocks
along with
the officials and
the trainers:
quiet and thinking
of death and the
one gone,
they stood
in a semi-circle
the brave little
men in boots and
silks,
the legions of death
appeared and
vanished, the sun
blinked once
I thought of love
with its head ripped
off
still trying to
sing and
then the announcer
said, thank you
and we all went on about
our business.
looking for Jack
like the rest of us, Jack didnât always shine too brightly:
âthe whole game is run by the fags and the Jews,â heâd say,
stamping up and down on my rug, grey hair hanging over hook nose
(he was a Jew); âlook, Hank, lemme have a fiveâ¦â
walking out and around the block,
coming back, stamping on the floor,
he wanted to get the game rolling, he wanted to conquer
the world.
âdamn you, Jack, I usually sleep till noonâ¦â
he had a little black book filled with names,
touches, contacts.
I drove him to a large place in the Hollywood hills
and he woke the guy up. the guy was good for
$20.
âthey owe it to us,â Jack said.
whenever he got a little aheadâthat meant 40 or 50 bucksâ
heâd take it to the track and lose it all,
have to walk back.
ânobody beats the horses, Hank, nobody, weâre all losers, poets
are losers, who gives a damn about the poets?â
ânobody, Jack, I donât like âem much myselfâ¦â
he showed me early photos when he was a young man in
Brooklyn.
he was quite handsome, quite manly, at the cutting edge of the Beat
movement. but the Beats died off and Jackâs been crashing ever
since. when his father died he left Jack 5 or ten grand
and he got
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