On The Hustle
I suppose
one of the worst times was
when
after a drunken reading and
an all-night party
I promised to appear at
an eleven o’clock English
class
and there they sat
nicely dressed
terribly young
awfully comfortable.
I only wanted to sleep
and I kept the wastebasket
close
in case I
puked.
I think I was in the state of
Nebraska or Illinois or
Ohio.
no more of this,
I thought,
I’ll go back to the factories
if they’ll have me.
“why do you write?”
a young man asked.
“next question,”
I responded.
a sweet birdie with blue eyes
asked, “who are your 3
favorite contemporary
writers?”
I answered, “Henry Chinaski,
Henry Chinaski and Henry...”
somebody asked,
“what do you think about Norman
Mailer?”
I told them that I didn’t think
about Norman Mailer and then I
asked, “doesn’t anybody have a
beer?”
there was this silence, this
continuing silence and the class
and the prof looked at me and I
looked at them.
then the sweet birdie with
the blue eyes
asked,
“won’t you read us
one of your poems?”
and then that’s when I
got up and walked
out
I left them in there
with their prof
and I walked down
through the campus
looking at the
young girls
their hair
their legs
their eyes
their behinds...
they all look so good,
I thought, but
they’re going to grow up
into nothing but
trouble...
suddenly I braced myself
against a tree and began
puking...
“look at that old
man,” a sweet birdie with
brown eyes said to a sweet
birdie with pale green eyes,
“he’s really
fucked-up...”
the truth, at
last.
44 görüntüleme
Yorum yapabilmeniz için giriş yapmanız gerekmektedir.