we lived together
with our 2 typewriters
working away
and her 2 children
manipulating the room.
she was difficult with
her brats:
"get away! can't you see
that Mama is
typing?"
so they would come to me
and I would
answer their questions be-
tween my beers and
my lines.
I really wasn't too fond
of then
but I wanted the lady to
do well:
poetry was important to
her,
she became very excited
and hammered the keys
as if great verse
was being drilled
into the page.
when she finished a poem
she'd bring it to me
and I'd read it,
"yes, it's good ... but
don't you think it'd
read better if you
began at line
4, dropped line
7 ... and then, of
course, you are going
to need an ending
line, I don't like the
ending ..."
"what do you think
the ending should
be?"
"how about ..." and
I would suggest a
line.
"why, yes, of course!"
she'd say, then run over
and reshape the poem.
. . . . .
the lady's poems began to
appear in some of the
little magazines
and soon
she was invited to give
readings at the
local poetry holes
and I went with her
and
listened
she had long hair and
wild, wild eyes, and
she danced and pranced up
there with her poems,
overdramatizing,
but she had a great
body
and she
twisted
it
and read and waved her
poems
and the men loved her,
such men as there are in
such places
with their little rhymers
tucked into their
knapsacks
and their neutered faces
glistening—
the applause made the lady
think
that things were really
occurring
and it kept her
twisting,
prancing, dancing
and
typing ...
the lady
one night
after lovemaking
told me,
"some day I will be
greater than
you!"
"at many things,"
I replied, "you
already are."
we typed together
and apart
for some years
and as such things finally go
it went.
she dissolved to some
desert town
and I repaired to
East Hollywood
where I lived with some
ladies
who didn't give a fuck
about typing at
all, who really didn't
give a fuck about
anything.
I lived through that time,
got away,
moved to a small town
near the harbor
where I began to hear from
the lady poet
again
via phone and letter.
mainly, I was evasive, having
learned some time ago that
going back
doesn't mesh with going
forward.
"you were my muse,"
she said, again and
again,
"I can't write
anymore ... "
so, you see, I served a
purpose:
and that's
a rather nice thing, don't you
think?
much better, I think, than
being known for being kindly
under stress
or having a big throbbing
dick
waving
forevermore ready
to enter those hungry
thighs
where no man, beast or
god
can stay forever
or even
wants to?
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