when the Beatles sang about 4000 holes
maybe they were talking about the 4000 assholes
on a hung-over Sunday morning
shitting out last nights doner kebabs and Bacardi Breezers
into the town’s sewerage system
to be carried away and washed up
on Blackpool’s stinking polluted shores
or maybe the 4000 holes
getting filled on a Friday night
in car parks, on the backseats of Honda Civics
and in the toilets of provincial nightclubs
maybe they should have sang about just one hole-
the black hole that sucks in culture and ambition there
and turns it into stasis and inertia
as if the whole place is an exercise in preservation
or maybe they should have sang about
the invisible Berlin wall that cuts Audley Range in two
in an act of unspoken, unacknowledged apartheid:
on one side the Asian population with at least a culture
sending the sounds of laughing children and the smell of spiced lamb
into the grey air with the promise of something more beyond the town
and on the other side the working class whites -
with nothing to hold onto but resentment
White Lightening
and a team that never wins
I always thought that this place would have produced
the best rock and roll in England
because there is everything to fight against
and nothing to inspire complacency
but no -
the sum total of the town’s achievement:
the lead singer from Selfish Cunt
and the writings of a smack addled pornographer
that nobody except you – dear reader -
has read
RINGMASTER OF OBLIVION
across from my rehab until lay a
liquor store called Circus Liquor
replete with a 70 foot tall
neon clown who blinked at us,
bottle in hand, from across
the Pasadena night
“He’s taunting us” said Marty, my bugged
out speed-freak sex change roommate
as the clown flashed
on
off
on
off
“He’s fucking TAUNTING us”
and it was true, every night
we sat noses pressed to the glass
almost tasting that first beer
through sheer force
of will
when I slept I felt his
light blinking against the nape of my neck
like restless – sinking – 4am guilt
when the time came for me to go
it happened quickly – I had enough
and found myself blinking in the
sunlight with my holdall
and my thoughts
and of course I went
the first beer
could only be
a disappointment
it’s true
flat, warm,
like rancid alcoholics piss
but I never was
a beer drinker
I cashed my check
and stepped out onto the parking
lot and tried to figure how
I’d make it downtown
and the goddamn clown
just looked down
with a knowing, insinuating
smile
EULOGY
I remain half a person:
I lost the other part
Somewhere in the city
Told him ‘wait here, I’ll be right back’ -
And abandoned him by a phone box
In a bad part of town
Docile, trusting that I would return.
He was stolen from me by all of the whores
Who took my prick then took my drugs
Removed in indefinable increments
By the time I woke up alone
In East LA motel rooms the next morning.
He was like my teeth:
One day there, the next day gone in an explosion of pain and blood
But one week on and it was as if
The hole was all that had ever been there
He is trapped in the refracted light
Twinkling in Virgin de Guadalupe pendants
Around the necks of tequila stinking men
Laughing outside of 7-11’s
His image appears like
Jesus on the Turin shroud
In the purple - yellow bruises
On the legs and faces of sad, pitiful crack whores
And I am the solitary mourner
At an imaginary funeral
Here; tossing the sod on a plywood coffin
With a mumbled, fumbling eulogy.
FOR STEVE P.
the abiding memory of you:
sticky London summer in your Dagenham kitchen
flesh plastered to crackling bones and hair wild
like a junked out Egon Schiele, with a crack pipe
dangling – all casual, like - from your lips
placing the syringe on the counter top
while rivulets of deep red blood flowed from yr arm to the linoleum
and me absently thinking
“god is in this room and pulsing through my veins”
yr thumbs cracking open CD security cases
with an almost undetectable application of pressure
such economy of movement I had never seen - lizard-like – poetic
a man for whom shoplifting was both a career and an art form
I often thought that your kids were lucky
to have a father so experienced in survival
so adept at working the system
so versed in the arcane
and then you vanished -
no phone calls – your flat lay quiet
no answering machine messages drunk at midnight
no clues, no nothing
maybe back inside of Pentonville
or a rehab unit somewhere
or lost to God in 12-step meeting rooms
there’s only that or death for the likes of us
and you were always too smart for death
if you read this, I want you to know that it’s almost 3 years on
and I’m still alive and doing better
found another hustle now
it doesn’t pay any, but goddamn it anyway
lost to God or lost to the worms
or lost to life or lost to words
wherever you are just know
that I remember everything
as fresh and raw and real and red as the blood
congealing on yr floor that afternoon
HEY, RANDAL
hey Randal
i was thinking about you today
remembering you in the bathroom of Goldfingers
and you were saying
don’t marry her!
you’re fucking crazy!
i lived with her for two years
she’s nuts, man
then you offered me a line of crystal meth
and I ignored your advice
well you were right
she was fucking nuts and the marriage didn’t last
and the drummer from the band we saw
went on to marry Lisa Marie Presley
that didn’t last either
i guess everyone got fucked over that night
hey, Randal
remember when we stayed up for 3 nights
getting high
and we ended up in The Spotlight
and everything seemed out of focus
6 in the morning and we were
snorting speed off the bar with a leather fag called Marty
i went to take a piss
became scared by my reflection
watched two old guys blowing in each other
right out in the open
and then we were off on your bike
roaring down Hollywood boulevard
pulling up alongside an LAPD prowl car
and you smiled and waved at them
before the light changed and we roared away
weaving in and out of traffic
steered by the hand of god?
hey, Randal
remember on that balcony
after we’d bailed our coke dealer out
and waited for him outside of the station
so we could pick up two eight balls
and he said
you white boys are fucking crazy
grinning a big wide grin
and full of cocaine and speed
and pills and booze
i said you were my brother and that i loved you
then i got embarrassed
but you said
its OK, i know
we’re the same you and me
just don’t ever forget this
and then, Randal
hell found us
and the party ground to a halt
Maus showed me pictures of you
in the period we lost touch
you looked older, bigger
haunted
you’d grown a crazy Anton LaVey moustache
and sat around the house for a year
smoking crack
and checking the door was still locked
and me?
that’s an old story
another ex-wife
two stints in rehab
a tattoo I don’t remember getting
and some missing teeth
(you can fill in the gaps, my friend)
but hey, Randal
i saw the pictures in Cambodia
when Maus rented your apartment and sold your car
and sent you over there to get better
with our friend Dave
you looked thinner healthier
that crazy moustache was gone
the haunted look was gone
and the pain was gone
you looked like my brother again
and the picture they used at your memorial service
is the one that really stuck in my head
an abandoned truck
thrown from the bike
neck snapped neatly
with some new girl
and Dave B at your side
you died as you lived
at full throttle
hey, Randal
you really got it made
in death you are perfect
ageless
reckless and beautiful
forever
WAR EVERY DAY
i have spent nights upon nights
shivering in the los angeles heat
waiting for the landlord
to start screaming about the rent
or my phone to buzz into life
with my dealers insane demands
that i pay what i owe him
no money, no veins
no nothing
just the snores of a junkie whore
sleeping in the bed next to me
her face pressing against my chest like
unrelenting dread
and the sickness is upon me
and The Fear is upon me
and my heart
battering against my ribs
like a starved rat in a cage
driven insane by the stench
of garbage
and i have thought to myself
"aw krist
under any other set of cirumstances
i could be happy..."
but when i crawled out of the garbage
and life took one of those unexpected turns
it does from time to time
when everything should have been golden
life still felt
sometimes
like barbed wire dragged across
exposed nerve endings
lemmie put it like this:
my friend who can't quit
had a 2 year old daughter
he told me one day the saddest
truest thing i ever heard
"sometimes i just sit with her on my knee
on a summers night
overlooking the thames
and i think 'life could not be any more perfect'
but then i think
'if i smoked a little junk
maybe it could'
thats the trouble with us junkies"
he said sadly
"we're never fucking satisfied"
DEATH OF AN ACCOUNTANT
i always sensed that she was crazy
you could see it in her terrified
car-wreck eyes
she wasn’t pretty
or fun to be around
most of the time she scared
the living shit out of me
i guess she suited my mood back then
more of an assisted suicide than a wife
the day I realized she was unraveling completely
we were shooting coke
and up in Venice Beach
getting prescriptions for morphine sulphate
from an octogenarian writing fool of a doctor
and the relentless clear skies and blazing sun
made it feel like a movie
the kind of movie
you wouldn’t want to get stuck watching
She said “wait here”
Staggered into a tobacconist
And emerged with $40
Of flavored cigars (she didn’t smoke)
“look at all these flavors!” she squealed
and I just looked at her glassy eyes
and those useless cigars
and I just KNEW, baby
her parents were scientologists
crazy in their own Californian way
and 2 hours later we were at their house
trying to borrow their car
“my mother is out of town” she told me
she wanted to drive her mother's car back to Hollywood
to score heroin with the rest of her disability check
but upon arriving she disappeared into the bathroom to fix
and left me coked out of my mind
making small talk with her father
who was already suspicious of his daughter’s outlandish manner
and we sat and looked at each other
and 20 minutes dragged by
and we sat and looked
and 30 minutes craaaawwwwlllleeeddd by
and I give him a look and a shrug as if to say
‘she’s fuckin’ nuts, what are you gonna do?’
and she was in there for 45 minutes trying to find a vein
before she popped out like a demented bleeding
coke fiend jack in the box
as if nothing had happened and started demanding her mothers car keys
well i guess the poor old bastard was too freaked out to argue
because the next thing she was reversing this big ugly SUV
out of their parking space into a narrow back alley
and I was trying to guide her
and her father was muttering to himself and cringing
and with a scraaaappppeee she took of half of the wing
and a chunk of the gate
and the car just stalled there
mute and useless
with a scream like banshee giving birth she leapt from the vehicle
and ran down the alley
and I gave him another shrug and we followed
finding her curled up in the fetal position
sobbing and muttering nonsense
amongst the garbage and the empty crack vials
her father looked at me for an explanation
but I had none worth giving
when I fled the west coast
like a startled rat fleeing a garbage can
she followed me to London
to a coldwater flat
in Hackney’s murder mile
where we sat and waited for release
and spat and
fought and shot up
and watched roaches dancing
on the black and white portable
like two earthbound phantoms
but that was years ago
and life evolved in indefinable increments
and the last time a saw her I was holding your hand
on a frosty north London night
when she appeared like a ghost
on the platform of Queens Park underground station
older and sicker
walking with a cane and holding onto
a sick looking old junkie for support
and she stayed on the train with us for a couple of stops
high and nodding
mouth slack from the medication she was on
face worn down into permanent ugly bitterness
the conversation was vague and circular
and when she got off you turned to me and said
“my god – that’s her? That’s your ex?”
and despite the cold as we walked into the lights of Euston station
I felt warm with your hand in mine
And I said “yes,
“there goes my ex-life.”
THIS IS A LOVE SONG
We met at what I thought
was the beginning of a beautiful career
but what turned out to be
its peak and last gasp
but still
you made all of the unpaid checks
and broken promises
and hopes raised then dashed
and bitterness worthwhile
I remember thinking you looked
Like no-one I had ever seen
Somewhere in between punk rock
And high fashion
Wide beautiful mouth
And soft brown skin
And I was flailing around
Trying to figure out just what the fuck I was
Trying to hard to prove I was one thing
And scared I was the other
But you smiled and thought I was crazy
But never judged me harshly
Not even in the junk sick mornings
When you woke up and saw me crouched on your floor
Probing for a vein and cursing
Your pussy, your asshole,
Your lips, your tits
Your buttocks, your mouth
In that dim East End bedroom
With the clang of the market traders
Like syrupy strings in a dumb movie
I kissed and held
And fucked and loved them all
And nights in bars
High on crack and love love love
Looking better than everyone else
And running home before the ecstasy kicked in
To eat your pussy or take pictures
While you sucked me, smiling
Our first place in Dalston
With the mice and the roaches
And the little heater we had to put on
For an hour before we undressed
And the music we blasted
And the child we conceived
And the promises we made
Huddled under the sheets
In the broken down Paris neighborhood
We made it like the Greeks
On the bed of a 7 year old girl
Sleeping with her mother in the next room
In the show at the 100 club
While some forgettable band played on
I worked your dress up
No panties
And we made it right there
Surrounded by the cool kids
That we knew were lame
And in the hospital
When they tore our hearts our with the news
And they sent you home to miscarry with
A box of codeine
And a leaflet about dealing with loss
I thought:
This is always how things end
Hospital rooms
Screaming ER drunks
That dread void in the heart
That swallows even your ability to cry
Do we follow the script
And spin off into our private miseries
Or do we take this pain and rottenness
And built a cathedral from it?
And here we are
Not in tragedy and heartbreak
Just two people
Still able to love
Watching a stupid show on TV
Laughing about how dull
And banal people really are
Our child sleeping up the hall
And we are
Content – for once
Content.
DAN FANTE
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
LENNY BRUCE
CHET BAKER