His wife the big proud bosom of a lady Alabama Barrel, named after the state not the container although it too proved quite a fit.

"Bama, cain understan yuh bit," he reached over across the kitchen table and plucked the corncob pipe out of her mouth and in continuing the motion, completing it, flung the pipe out the open screen door, snapping in half as it hits the grey weathered porch boards, the bowl with a jagged half-inch of stem skidding off into the dusty grass. Clem was up and beside her as her teeth clacked shut, they'd been through this before, with one hand he pried open her clam jaw, the other diving quick as a viper past her mollusk-like tongue to fetch out the whole soggy corncob she'd been ruminating. He threw it to the floor where it turned a few sloshy cartwheels and landed by the snout of an ancient crusty-eyed hound dog, vagabond Sacka Bonz affectionately Zak for short, asleep & snoring & foul smelling in the corner. An eye drooped open slightly, excreted a thick opaque drop, and closed again.

"Bammy, gotta quit at. Fur outer fie denders sirvaid . . . "

"Mrmph."

I hate that, even more I hate that accent that a mouth stuffed with corncobs only enhances, stupid regressive gibberal dialect; most of all he hated the sound of his own voice, for that accent was also his, every word he spoke spoken with pain and revulsion.

I hate it here, I feel so displaced, as though I should be somewhere else.

Clem sat back down at the table and became silent, monolithic, undisturbed as though nothing had happened, he was back at the pub, oh luck, a half finished pint of plain in his hand. His eyes sparkled as he downed the remainder sludge foam and all in a massive Irish gulp, the boys all whooped their approval and he ordered up another round on him. This is good, he thought, I feel like getting really drunk, an extraordinary sousing, a boisterous rabble raisin pub in County K., anywhere but Yakmashpatata County, sweet song of Erin bloating my belly.

"Clem!"

He still felt like getting plowed, giving the half bottle of Jack setting on the counter next to the flour a long distasteful look.

He sighed, hate that stuff, just drink it and get mad and break things, every morning I'm so hungover I feel like a sick cow ate me up and shat me back out in a gush of the runs.

"Clem!"

"Wa?"

"Clem," a big cast-iron skillet black and thick coated with dreary bleary years snapped and popped and sizzled, thin uneven crudely cut strips of Old Suey's butt filled the kitchen with a heaviness as much tactile as olfactory, Old Suey his favorite pet, an infertile breeder with two rows of tiny unsuckled teats, slaughtered a few days earlier out of no reason but a vague sense of duty and boredom.

"I air hungry!"

He snuggled the air, unconsciously imitating a decade-younger version of old Zak, "I smells bacon!"

"Bacon's good!"

"Bacon's bacon!"

"Mm-mm."

"Shu-up. Yuh soun lyk yuh Ol Suey afryn up."

I remember, he recollected like a dark bank of storm clouds hovering on the horizon, static, signaling a late spring downpour in some distant undeserving neighboring county, I remember the day I was birthed, my birth-home at the corner of 44th and Broadway New York City, I fled the evil big city still in diapers, I hobbled southward knock-kneed down south, down, down where the papaws grow in sing-song patches and patched up pickaninnies sing songs, sweet songs merrily bent over stretching, picking little white ball after ball in the cotton patches stretching clear to the thundery horizon, Mr. Boll Weevil shoofly shoo!

He thought about his birthplace, trying to conjure up a nostalgic picture; all he could see was dark flat-buffed metal and oversized plate glass windows, plastic images of brightly colored plastics signs reading "Beefsteak Charlie's" and shiny sparkles, so bright; glassy-eyed from stout he felt sure a tear was creeping out.

"Wish ta lawd ahd follered memaws visen merrid me gud main li ol Ashlee LeGoom staiduv yuh."

"Shu-up Bammy, shuda follad mownd visen cutchu up staid Ol Suey. Mon ol Zak, got plowin tado."

"Wail go hedn pler yerl fool, ahz sleepin."

"Cmon ol man, mite churn up nol cow bone."

"Den gohed chaw nit, ain gwan nowairs nohowz."

"Dum dawg!"

"Clem!"

"Dam dum dawg!"

Dum-dee-dum, E.S. looked out the window from his top floor studio in the outlying country district, an uncannily Viennese roll to the terrain, past the outskirts of buildings to the outlying countryside, on and on almost all the way to the tempestuously darkened horizon; he squinted watching the progress of an antish silhouette pushing its way in a single straight line. Such diligence that ant possesses, he thought, after having while away most of the afternoon observing mile after mile the ant trekking from the far left almost completely beyond the far right boundary of his view.

E. yawned and scratched at his crotch which sprang eagerly, expectantly to attention. The hand ignored its intended, instead raking through his brash mop of hair; he turned his attention to the Harm's house across the street, delighted to see the two daughters gazing intently at his window.

"Noch einmal, die zwei hubßchen Mädchen, ach!"

Standing erect he tugged at his trousers and sprang on a piece of paper on the floor, black chalk and gouache working frenetically, brutally, hastily, before the opportunity arisen subsided, limp slack and slight, another small empty night. On my knees, he scribbled, a frock undone in front brightly orange the midmorning sun, hands upheld fingers long and bony from ängst and deprivation, mouth smudge red as sex.

Blow, blow, blow. Dry, dry, dry.

E. seized the top edge and whisked the drawing into the air fluttering in crackles like a giant autumn leaf, holding it out against the window madly dancing the figure in front of it by hopping foot to foot. He peered around from behind, they were watching, pointing, giggling, gaily chattering to one another in what to him was less than a whisper. Casting it to the floor he picked up a stack of similar drawings drawn for similar reasons and began a crude cinematic parade of scantily clad self-portraits.

"Edith und Adele, wollen Sie mit mir ins Kino gehen? Ooh, hoo-hoo, ah-ha-ha!"

"Wah yuh say Bama, cain hurdly hur yuh, um toofer way."

Raging with excitement, little E. poked out squinting and squirting all over the back of the final likeness, "Trieste mit Gerti im neunzehn hundert und sechs!"

"Cain unerstan yuh noways."

Clem kept plowing a straight unwavering line through the dust and the mud. The mud hip deep to a hip boot and lips steeped with dust caked on encrusted swirling six inches dry on top, he plowed up a massive dust bowl that ravaged half of Kansas, the silt run-off clogging the pores of the mighty Mississippi which backed up black and fetid, indirectly causing, it is said, the rise of Lake Michigan into the streets of Chicago, the smokestacks of Gary billowing green and hazy from Atlantis Steel.

That damn cow up on that hill panicked again, this time an islander, the oil lamp bounced twice on the hoof-packed dirt floor, hard packed, shattering on the third, quite final impact. Hay dancing in light, sturdy dry beams alick and caressed by crackling tongues and spidery fingers.

Cow lowed to herself, "It's hot as hell in here, I'm gonna get all burnt up, fuck this, I'm no horse, I'm gonna get my ass outa here for it gets well-done," Bessie Cow bolted, out that door bolt and all, skipping along down the meadow hill a bolt of lush green petiole and petulantly poised flower print, cloven hooves through clover, the expanded lake lap-lapping, Cow amooed in chant, "I'm no horse, I sure ain't no horse," Bess down the hill no obstacle unconquerable, none greater than the barn-like inferno--what is a lake? water body fluid and yielding, the hill continues downward unimpeded with Cow in hot pursuit; she floats downstream on her back, four legs skyward ridiculous and spindly surrounding a bloated ashen belly.

Clem's plow dipped suddenly, water-diviner, the watery memory swimming in his eyes, the horse-drawn cart honeymoon to Baton Rouge, the ferry, the river so high, grasping the rail with her white-knuckled newlywed hands, "Clem," her voice pierced the valley with that shrillness tonally akin to the steam whistles of the paddle-wheelers slow plowing the currents of mother river, "looka thar, daid cow!"

Shu-up, he smacked his palm upside his head.

Jacob Douglas a youthful genius of sorts never noticed a thing, so great was his dedication of dreams and perseverance of spirit, spirited miles away up in his tower of lofty vision, a scrap tattered hovel housing young Douglas and his notes and typewriter and rough draft of his thesis. A doctoral candidate at Northwestern University Extension Theological Department School of Plumbing, plummeting into the pits of his mind for thoughts jeweled and plummed, a plume of inspiration he read aloud to the walls the passage, the crux of dissertation, his raison d'être, the finest moments of his voluminous Why I Want To Be A Plumber: A Study Of Plumbers As Great Gods, False Prophets and Charlatans:

" . . . for what is a plumber if not God?

"We remember Jesus, the carpenter, the Son of God, the plumber's right-hand-man, God came down to Earth in the guise of a wood-working prophet. You need some chairs, a diningroom table? Are your shutters swaying rotting on their hinges, are you having roof troubles due to faulty beam construction? Well, then you called on the Heeb. Sure, you could make your own chair, but He could make one better.

"Now, the Christians believe in a Second Coming, the Jews in a First, and all the rest in none at all. But consider the following lines from the Book of Revelations, for they are most truly instructive, and of the caliber of words predestined that will likely ring through all ages without being forgotten, ever:

Then:

Quite clearly it is indicated that God's second time around could be foretold and prophesied by the advent of modern indoor plumbing as we have come to know it today in all its many and varied robes of spiritual distress.

"Picture the following scenario: a young housewife, anyone, your neighbor across the street, hall, even yourself, faced with an insurmountable problem, one of such impossible vexation, say, a kitchen sink that refuses to drain, beyond the plunging stage, modern products so-called remedies proven to be so many sanctioned commercial lies. The Name of God is invoked (over the phone, He Almighty Modern) and He appears with the tools of salvation, you feel His presence, you tremble at the scent of His cigar, tears in your eyes, such special, deliciously spiritual feelings overwhelm you as you, pathetically human, dwell upon your lifetime's misfortunes and dirty dishes. God has many such missions as yourself each and every day, a gilded appointment book full, a miracle is wrenched and He departs, out the door along with your problems. Another tiny human sings songs of joyous praise, resolutely scrubbing a pot clean with a Brillo . . . "

Lap lap lap, his feet were all wet.

____________________

132The Bible, Rev. 8: 10-11.

133Ibid., Rev. 7: 17.

Clem O'Hammer: A Truest Biography, by Clem McAxe. Part II: "Adult Life," Chapter 5, pp. 476-77.:

(He said that during one of their lengthy talks over and beyond dinner at what would generally be a nouveau upscale sort of restaurant in the months and years following the divorce his mother made quite a number of things much much clearer by admitting to him that within a few months into the marriage she had realized that the whole thing was an unfathomably drastic mistake but one with him growing in her belly she had accepted and resigned herself to, she said she decided to just turn off her brain for twenty years.)

Clem plowed down straight and narrow, or narrow and straight as possible, as he could, as he could possibly plowing a line between, within the confines of the double orange-painted lines as he plowed down the median of highway 42, the slim raised but worn down median bordered by two lanes on either side. He reached the top of a rise as the highway conformed to the general land contour, the lay of the land lying spread out before him, coasting down a stretch of hill with the same feeling of exhilaration and slightly fearful heart palpitations as occurred on the more daring carnival rides once a year at the county fairgrounds as recalled from what felt like a fictitious childhood, he sailed past jaggedly vertical rock faces of the road-cut that wept run-off in cascades of tears, for years, where the highway changed from placid and gentle to vicious and sharp, obtrusive.

Then, at the bottom of the hill and across a bridge, crossing Harrod's Creek he was in the flatlands, the terrain to his right slightly rolling, to his left horizontal fields and tree clumps to the horizon at the river's bank, the final strip of smoky blue, the Indiana side; Clem, in a rare moment, became afraid, apprehensive, the by-passing traffic seemed to come at him in straight lines menacingly closer, his median of safety was now worn even with the pavement.

Clem stopped plowing, he hand signaled a left turn and plowed wide over to the right shoulder where he felt safer and the gravel turned up much easier than asphalt.

Nice country, he thought, right nice country here, it's easy to plow. Over here to the side it's much easier, so easy I can even look around and see what's going by.

Dead dog, didn't think too much of highways, pretty fresh just a few days, side of the head facing down isn't there. The hind legs: one is bent backward while the other is bent about four different directions, big green/blue and black iridescent flies like the eyes, the immediate are is developing that fresh smell of rot.

As opposed to, some fifty yards further down

The stale musk of ancient death that alerts all plowers to the proximity of a flat disk of shoe leather camouflaged by time that was once an opossum or maybe a rabbit.

Clem gagged, he snorted.

"Feuwie!"

"Faggot!" a rush of wind, an arm frozen out a window and something glass shattered fifteen feet ahead, the car was way far off down the road.

For the second time Clem stopped plowing.

The shards of glass were sprayed out like a comet's tail from the point of impact, beer bottle brown, the top was intact in the grass: twist-off.

While mulling over why what had just happened had happened his gaze roamed at random, with no particular sense, as uncontrolled as a bovine's in a field, from the glass at his feet slowly to the grass, drifting absently down into the shallow litter strewn drainage gully off to the side, tucked among the wild grasses a brown paper bag.

"Brown paper bag, what a wimp. Hey Rock man, you some kinda sissy?"

"Eat shit, you're the only faggot in this car."

"Yea, well only pussy wimps drink their beer outa paper bags."

"Hey fuck you, I'm the driver."

"Yeah, well then let me drive . . . "

"Get your fuckin' pansy hands offa . . . "

"Hey. What can I say? I wouldn't drive like a memaw and put my beer in a fucking bag."

Rock punches the accelerator to the floor, letting go of the wheel he turns and shoves Bud against the passenger door, secured by baling wire, "Hey, if you don't like my driving, go ahead and get the fuck out, wanna walk the rest of the way to the goddamn party? Go ahead, be my fuckin' guest!"

(Rev. 12: 5, 15-16.) She gave birth to a son--a boy destined to shepherd all nations with an iron rod [emphasis my own]. Her child was caught up to God and to his throne. . . . The serpent, however, spewed a torrent of water out of his mouth to search out the woman and sweep her away. The earth then came to the woman's rescue by opening its mouth and swallowing the flood which the dragon spewed out of its mouth.

(Rev. 21: 5-6.) The One Who sat on the throne said to me, "See, I make all things new!" Then He said, "Write these matters down, for the words are trustworthy and true!" He went on to say: "These words are already fulfilled! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To anyone who thirsts I will give to drink without cost from the spring of life-giving water."

False prophets @ $20/hour.

Jacob had water on the knees in a most literal sense, on, around, rapidly engulfing; his feet were like two soggy loaves of bread, mush, their names were "Possum" because they looked, felt and smelt like two bloated possums which had floated for too long down a river or spring or body of wormwood.

(Rev. 22: 1, 17.) The angel then showed me the river of life-giving water, clear as crystal, which issued from the throne of God and of the Lamb . . . the Spirit and the Bride say, "Come!" Let him who hears answer, "Come!" Let him who is thirsty come forward; let all who desire it accept the gift of life-giving water.

"Come!" he shouted, "Come! Come! I'm coming, I have come!"

Pacing, rather, that is, sloshing circles inside the square of his room, "Ezekiel chapter forty-seven verses one through five. 'Then he brought me back to the entrance of the temple, and I saw water flowing out from beneath the threshold of the temple toward the east, for the façade of the temple was toward the east; the water flowed from the southern side of the temple, south of the altar. He led me outside by the north gate, and around to the outer gate facing the east, where I saw the water trickling from the southern side. Then when he had walked off to the east with a measuring cord in his hand, he measured off a thousand cubits and had me wade through the water, which was ankle-deep. He measured off another thousand and once more had me wade through the water, which was now knee-deep. Again he measured off a thousand and had me wade; the water was up to my waist. Once more he measured off a thousand, but there was now a river through which I could not wade; for the water had risen so high it had become a river that could not be crossed except by swimming.' Oh Israel! On the bed of my life I am coming!"

He lunged and grabbed his bobbing bed, an air mattress he slept on in lieu of a real bed; pushing off the sodden blankets he climbed on, steering duck-like with his feet to the wall to retrieve from its cheaply, already peeling, veneered shelf of K-Mart veneration his plunger, a suitable oar, his only cherished or not possession, the solitary physical accouterment he needed to guide himself through life and life-giving water; his Bible was in his heart as a metaphor for his head.

Jacob Douglas theological plumber doctoral candidate turned plumber-non-prophet paddled out through the open window.

"Clem!" she cried out through the window open above the sinkful of dishes she stood before washing.

Alabama dried her hands on her apron and waddled on out the back screen door onto the porch, a rueful glance down at her broken pipe, she cupped her hands around her mouth a megaphone and hollered out, "Clem O'Hammer, whur yuh?" She looked long and steady out across the fields, flat plains curving out a horizon; way far off, squinting hard, a dust bowl was blowing around somewhere around Kansas, tornadoes always blowing around in Kansas, like in that moving picture "The Wizard of Oz," now that was one movie she's seen at one time sometime, made her think of her twin sister Virginia Barrel, Daddy'd named them after the two states where the Capitol of the Confederacy'd been, "Darthy aways mine me Ginny," she'd inevitably say, because Judy Garland looked like and so always reminded her of her sister so she'd always think about Ginny because she liked to think of Ginny even though Ginny didn't look anything like Judy Garland who looked like their younger sister who was ten years younger than them and whom she didn't like to think about so she always though about Ginny who didn't like their younger sister any better whose name was Dixie Candy Barrel, D.C. for short to anyone but Daddy who if there was anything he liked better than the Confederacy it was bourbon balls.

But had already stared through the pictorials a couple of times, he didn't like to read the private dick with dick stories so he flipped instead through the dildo and phone-sex ads in the back.

"Hey Rock, listen this one! 'Cum down to Dixie. This red-hot southern belle is burning to ring your every desire.' Damn what a body, I wish she was right here right now, I'd stick it right in her!"

"Yea you wish, closest you'll come is that picture and your hand, huhuhuhuh!"

"Eh, fuck you! You wannanother beer?"

Inside the brown paper bag was a paperback book and about a half a dozen spent condoms.

(Somebody who had actually been in her bedroom, that is, his bedroom where she often enough was, remarked that the room's most distinctive feature was the floor littered, covered with used rubbers.)

Using forefinger and thumb like delicate forceps he plucked out the book and wiped it front and back cover on the grass. It could have been the double-featured lust of Buns & Frenzy but was instead a clean-cut book with an odd picture on the front.

He simply reads there, right there at the breakfast table, his coffee gets neglectfully cold which doesn't matter too much, his wife makes such terrible coffee to begin with and he can't even boil water, so he sits there occasionally a cold sip at the breakfast table single-mindedly reading, ignoring everything except the reading which is concentrating solely on reading while his wife pads around in her morning attire and unadulterated morning ugliness and the kids sitting across from him blithely ignoring him anyway as they slurp up as loudly as possible their bowls of cold cereal-coated sugar sodden in milk.

Clem was hungry and Alabama was sure getting there standing over the skillet smelling the crispy fried smells of Suey strips afrying up.

She turned and brayed, "Clem! Yuh reedin? Wadat?"

"Hmph, sumin ah founed."

"Yuamen lyk Wizzer Voz, stardid me athankin nabowt et dother day an nohow aweze maker methanker nabowt aw Ginner anow . . . "

It said THOMAS BERNHARD, separated by lines, CORRECTION, with the o's underlined, small-type o's set up on lines, its paper cover was creased and worn; inside, on the pages, it didn't have any paragraphs. Trans. Sophie Wilkins, copyright 1979 Alfred A. Knopf, Aventura soft bound first edition, pp. 20-21.

It said: "to go no matter where, to the ends of the earth if necessary, but not to stay where there is nothing for him, or else if there is something, it's sure to be only the most miserable, the most mind-destroying, the most head-wrecking kind of thing, sure to drive him to every kind of pettiness and meanness, here everything exists only to crush him, to vilify and disown him at all times, he must realize that here in his Austrian homeland he is chronically exposed to vulgar misunderstanding and vulgar vilification, sure to drive him to his destruction and to his death and to the annihilation of his existence."

E. wrote to me the most poignant letter from his prison cell the other day, moist with such ripe and noble sentiments, spouting off Ich werde für die Kunst und für meine Geliebten gerne ausharren! confiding that the main thing was if he didn't get some pussy pretty soon he was going to die.

"Clem thair, yuthur, wer yuh gwan? . . . nwel Daidyd nemd usat couner uv grampappy ooza bonerfine genrulf der granan glureus say ays ay . . . "

"Gwan geeama plerin."

Hullow, salutations from Room 305.

Upstairs, directly, in Room 405, a couple are humping with all the vigor of wharf rats, the bedsounds go squeak asqueak asqueak, the sweet sing-song cries of a puerto-rican maiden being satisfied by her man in a by-the-week hotel. My my, this has been going on for pretty long, she's grunting, yi yi, I think this evening she is more than a repository for sperm, to clarify, another anecdote: we were sitting in bed the other evening, rather, sitting on the bed because there is no other place to sit (a break in the narrative for an update: the rhythm is going faster, faster faster, the pace foreboding an explosion of massive scale, aiyiyi! Now all I hear is satisfied giggles, maybe a bass moan or two.) (wait, now there is singing, wait a minute, it sounds like a chorus or something.), heavy drunken plodding up the stairs then along the hallway, silence, jingling, then heavy breathing and the scraping attempts of a foreign key trying to deflower our lock, we started yelling, "Yes? Who is it? What do you want? Who is it? Wrong room, wrong room," until the figure on the other side of the door clunked off, up the stairs, the sound of the footsteps leading into Room 405. K. went out down around the corner to get us some coffee to-go, so I am the only one who can attest to the following, it all happened during the few minutes K. was gone: I heard the merry sweet sing-song of a little sweet voice, speaking that language I do not and refuse to ever learn how to understand, in meek but quite definitely protesting tones. Silence. The squeaks won. There weren't very many, just a few, very brief, less time than it takes for a nasal spray to melt one's sinuses. Blow your nose. Then somebody got up and took a shower. K. knocked on the door.

Leman hung around his abode doing something that he would do and Lemin sat around in his abode trying to think up some things that Leman would do in his abode so that he too could do them in his abode, he thought desperately about phoning up Leman and asking him what he was doing and what he was doing.

Clem plowed despite his ever-growing hunger, hell don't forget thirst, twelve days (and nights) he'd been churning through that desert; man, I could use a cup of coffee, even more I could go for a frosted mug of beer, plowing up to that prospector's camp (I remember a certain catravamp, at some point, future, interject in the past, bearing at all any relation?), he smiles or tried to grin without having teeth, I asked him for a beer which he said he didn't have; I knew then not to trust the man, motherfucker, either a liar or he didn't drink beer, he shoved a ladle in my face very nearly breaking out all my teeth, "No, but I got some nice, cold water, want some water, want to be floating on an air mattress in a big swimming pool of it, want to drift lifelessly in an endless ocean of it, want to dogpaddle around in Lake Michigan, nice cold water?" I kicked the old fool in the gums, "You stupid bastard I want a beer!" though by now I'd sure as hell take a good cup of coffee. I plow. Clem plowed for another hour until he arrived at a roadside corner pizza diner where he parked his plow and went in, the only place for miles and miles in this land of sand and concrete. He went in and ordered two slices and a large styrofoam cup of pulpy-smelling brown water that passed for coffee, trying hard to eat but it's so hard, maybe I'm overly hungry as to be unable to eat or the formica tops, the mirrors on the walls making hundreds of chewing mouths or the food isn't good and the coffee isn't coffee, the speaker in the front left corner of the ceiling disguised but not destroyed by a hanging plastic planter sprouting plastic ferns blares slightly shot in the woofer: "The New K-100, 100 Karat Gold . . . (radios tuned into K-100 in pizza parlors coast-to-coast-to-shining sea . . . ) . . . the New K-100, so as to differentiate between the old K-100 and the old-new K-100, old-old K-100 . . . 100 Karat ROCK!"

"Bland blithering bilious bilgy blighted billabong!" standing and screaming and shocking the hell out of everyone else, not to mention himself, "and I can't stand it anymore, not another minute," effervescent, tumescent, erubescent at his own eruditeness, Clem stalked out the door in a huff and a slam, slamming his plow into reverse and scraping off in a shower of gravel.

Mercury and Mars

Fast and hard

Dragged out down in those bars

Waiting here for you sweetie

Waiting here for you sweetly

It's a sort of tendency (on your part)

You replicate all the things you love

Rock said, "Turn this faggot shit off," while Leman said, "Turn this fabulous song up," and Bud did and Lemin did and Jacob did absolutely nothing of the sort, the sort of anything at all connected, like a disembodies spirit he just drifted eastwardly according to intuition and currents.

And Clem plowed and plowing furrowing his brows and plowing over and through what appeared as virgin, fertile thoughts, freshly turned soil exuding the most fragrant perfume of a clear day in spring and the clean smells of newly churned dirt heavy and musky like shit and decay, fermentation and rot, he thought out of the blue and the sky of Lem his twin brother or long lost son who'd remained behind or fled in terror to the big city that defined an east coast and denied anything else, that decried a west coast and defied everything else, that defiled its own kind and never declined another drink.

Clem thought of Lem and Lem's abode and about how nice it'd be to have a drink or two with him, a six-pack or two, and Clem plowed, trickles then foaming rivulets of sweat beading and building then rolling off of his thoughts of Lem and Lem's door on which he would knock on wood.

Lemme tell ya: I am working underground that is a dirt-floored basement that would be called a crawl-space were it not for its expansiveness in the vertical that instead defines it (instead) as a dirt-floored basement though in all other physical properties and respects that include just dirt floors and raw wood beams and bump up and knock your head it could be viewed, regarded, even categorized as an extremely tall/high crawl-space hence to be utmostly accurate a walk-space which is underneath and also to be considered in (as in a part of) a very large building, at least, for certain, with regard to length and width as testified to by the expansiveness, horizontally, of the basement, or sublevel, walk-space, which can be clarified and verified by stating that as I can see one wall, near to where I stand or stoop, I cannot see the opposite one, my vision fails as it peers and becomes lost in a forest of support beams receding into pitch blackness, and as for the height we may surmise with some certainty as quite great as well as evidenced by the sheer magnitude of its base, although magna est veritas, et praevalebit upon merely stepping outside, perhaps gazing upward, variety is the spike of life, but I, for myself, seem foredoomed to languish in hard labor in the basement that is a walk-space that is not so high I don't have to duck my head sometimes to avoid getting a bump.

As I was saying I was working, or am working work that is nailing by banging boards fence-like up and down and across the foundation posts, a fence project to protect against and keep out giant rats which could also be much gianter cockroaches which are all the same size and big and T. is knocking on the door, there is a knock on the door I know instinctively and correctly to be T., instantly wrenched up I am, immediately sitting up and pulling on pants emphatically declaring, "Well, I guess go get the door," which she does and I hear the voice of T. in the entryway.

What it is?

And cockroaches, and "man, they're the only things that are going to survive the bomb," in a scientific fact that has become public domain in a trivial sort of folklorey kind of way, maybe not the ones that are so stupid as to be in buildings, but definitely the ones underground, the ones that are smart enough to be hiding out in the vast network of tunnels that they have underground, underneath everywhere which is why it's impossible to ever get rid of the damn things, they're everywhere, said through a mouthful of half-chewed corn chips from a bag that is dinner, the funny thing being (har har) that people are pretty much like roaches, adapting to the poisons they ingest (har har), some die during the evolutionary process which is bound to happen, which is defined as happening, but most don't, take heart, when the holocaust occurs there'll be those of us too stoned or drunk to notice, we'll survive unfazed and the mutant cockroaches will emerge from their burrows the size of large dogs, it'll be just us and them baby, and we'll do without taxis, we'll harness up them big roaches and scuttle away uptown, we won't even need elevators, pull on the bridle and we'll be crawling up the sides of those buildings.

And then there was this knock on the door that I knew who it was, that old drug retrospect, remember how we were sitting around agreeing how nice it was to have a spare sofabed in our workroom naming all those names of our possible guests, it always seemed real good back home that old home people up here had extra bed space. Then I gave a wry little grin and jutted out my jaw like FDR, "Yea, and probably one of these days we'll wake up to knocking on the door and it'll be Old Buddy wondering if we can put him up for awhile." An inside on-going joke with a four year history, beyond explanation, and so I got up wondering who the hell could be knocking at eleven o'clock Saturday morning, nobody I could think of would even be up much less at our door. Sound asleep at the knock, you didn't even hear it, you just saw me get up, pull on a pair of pants, sweatpants and disappear down the hall. I opened the door and you heard me say, "Hey, hellow there, come on it," and a male voice that you couldn't place. I looked through the peephole while tying up the drawstrings of my britches, and if I hadn't been in the mood to open the door to a stranger I wouldn't have, all I could see was this sort of generic wrinkled up older hispanic woman.

I opened the door and there stood Old Buddy. I was baffled.

Have sleepingbag will travel will sleep will stay, of course, always for just a few days.

Jacob Douglas was seen by an irate farmer, prone, kickpaddling through a northern Indiana cornfield.

Clem plowed, awhistling. Dixie?

As Franz Kafka awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he dreamt of rocks, nothing but rocks.

The puddles are everywhere, you can't cross the street without them, the puddles are deep, inches deep, collecting and flooding the gutters, each block is an island and every street you cross is two shoes full of water with the rain torrential and steady, neither of us an umbrella and a long walk home, already soaked each half a bottle of rosé two ninety-nine plus tax warm and cold.

Then: A CHORUS OF DARKIES AT THE CORNER OF NINTH AND FIRST: Sinse! Sinse!

Now it's walking down hard pouring rain in the deserted streets, past Cooper Union on Cooper Square heading south on Lafayette, down off another drunkard, he wavers and reels on the sidewalk, bending under the beating blow of the rain, we take the same pathetic shower, and on our way home last night, he crosses the street towards us and right before the corner she veers off my right in a bee-line diagonally across the intersection smartly as I continue all gaped mouthed and he staggers against me grabbing my arm with a pit bull grip demanding that I do him a favor, and it is cold and wet and I keep getting colder the longer I stand still getting wetter and he keeps speaking in circles never reaching his point, you have to do me a favor leading to I'm very desperate returning to you're going to have to help me and so having barely broken stride I continue after her, towards where she stands cattycorner, frightened, and sort of dragging him across the street with me, babbling all the while about how he is so desperate, and I have to do him a favor, until the other side where he lets go of my arm and grabs the neck and draw-strings of my drenched hooded sweatshirt for added emphasis or something, like, oh christ, yea what a tough guy, I guess you mean business, huh?

Are you going to yell for the police, do you have a knife? No, no.

Prevalently calm, he even has a two-foot section of pipe in his other hand, funny, I just noticed it, should I grab it and take it away from him, easy enough he's so drunk, or shove him off and out-run him or just a quick knee-jerk, break off his nose with my elbow and cave his face in with the pipe, throw him through a windshield, dust off my hands and walk on, calm like watching a movie and being wiped out and tired, oblivious and wanting to go home, be home, no sense in doing anything, it seems too much effort, yelling at the television, you say you are desperate whereas you're pathetic: what do you want anyway: he says subways, something about subways and fingers pointing, I'm not going on any subway with this fool, I'm no fool except to be standing out in the rain, this is the limit. At which point she asks if he needs money to ride the subway, yes, she takes a dollar from her pocket, no two, desperate, pathetic, miserable and far enough from somewhere for me to give him another.

Clem O'Hammer: A. T. B., by Clem McAxe:

I don't remember exactly what it was all about, it just involved my two younger sisters and the Monopoly game, either they weren't letting me join in or I was behaving plain mean--I grabbed most of the $100 and $500 bills, this was in the basement with the two sisters shouting and the younger breaking into a bawl, some pushing and pummels and the younger one runs upstairs screaming for mommy.

The stairs are unfinished, open, grey painted: basement stairs, the echo heavy, I realize, echoing of thunderstorms breaking drenched there I stand caught with a fistful of dollars.

A stern command, a hot refusal.

A sequence of such, shrieking she lunged for the money, crumpled I yank the bankroll away, I swing around her and run up the stairs. The chase ensues, spirally: up from the basement around through the front hall into the livingroom back to the diningroom passing through the kitchen, den, ending in the workroom.

Her large drawing boards covered in a clutter of everything carried into the room and not taken out, spilling onto two beds forming an L-shape into a corner completed by a small table (I decide I don't want to go to kindergarten today, so it gets later and she is busy so I stay very quiet, it gets later, I'm sure I don't have to go, I get to go back to sleep, and later, but she starts getting ready to go, I tell her I don't want to go but she says I have to, at the last minute, past the last minute, we're already late, I sneak into the workroom, push one of the beds enough so I can slide under the table and pull the bed back up flush, for ten minutes she calls my name, anxiously to threateningly, she searches the house, hollers out the front door, I hear her thumping down into the basement and back up, she walks into the room and looks around, I hold my breath and close my eyes, she leaves, I breathe and she returns, shoves the bed aside and finds me and I refuse to go so she pulls me out by the arm smacking me and yelling up a storm the entire way to school.), two closets stored full and a small writing desk for an old black Singer sewing machine, a cheap metal cart of plants by the window, a room with only one door, a grave mistake, I was cornered.

She grabs the money and I hang on, a twisting tug-of-war, the bills are rumpled, torn, vicious shouts, I strike out and she hits back.

An explosive acquiescence, pulling the money out of her hand I howl and fling it all up in the air, yelling abuse I run up the stairs to my room followed by her squawks to get up there and stay up there until I'm told to come down and just wait until my father gets home.

It was late fall to midwinter, she slunk in flower-scented outdoor snow cold and crestfallen, the trees stark dark scratches in the evenly dirty sky, an odd leaf still clinging for no reason, crying on the telephone in painful, ugly sounding sobs like retching, she mourned her last child chastising herself, she cried; he said, "I don't want to live with you anymore, I'm sorry but I don't, I want to live with my dad, I want to fall, my brother and sister the leaves, all different colors, and the sticks and life, unfettered and free, spaciously free."

Stark bare everything gets colder, everything gets colder and blanches into grey.

"These cops went to an elementary school after getting a report about a prowler and they found this 10-year-old boy wandering around. He refused to talk so they took him in for questioning. 'When officers were unable to convince [him] to confess his intent, a mighty battle of wits began between the suspect and Lieutenant,' the kid wouldn't say anything except his name, 'in exasperation, the lieutenant threatened to hold his breath until [the boy] confessed. This proved to be too much, and he blurted out that he had broken into the school to retrieve his homework so he wouldn't get a zero when school opened Monday.'"

Leman (a.k.a. Lem, henceforth designated: Lem(an)) sat in the kitchen drinking coffee while Oral Dix sat in the kitchen drinking coffee and taking no particular notice, waiting on a call.

"Ooh, god, this 19-year-old guy guzzled five beers and a quart of whiskey while 'fellow partygoers shouted, "Go, go, go."' And then he passed out for an hour, turned blue and died. An assistant principal where he went to high school: 'Jack, when we had him, was a real competitor--and I mean a real competitor. Whether that had anything to do with it, other kids egging him on, I don't know.' . . . witnesses said he 'guzzled down that quart in between 10 and 15 minutes.' . . . 'It was a party that got out of control.' They laid him down on the kitchen floor until somebody noticed he was vomiting blood, so they walked him around outside for awhile, then laid him out on the porch. He lay out there an hour completely forgotten until some new guests arrived and asked about him. Aw, him, he's out on the porch all blue; let's go cheer him up! Gaw-awd, what a great party."

Once a week the campus pub staged its 5¢ beer night; when that night came, so did we. By the time we settled at a large round table, our crowd was ten or twelve.

Everyone had a little change and some people had more than just change. Happiness at 25¢ a pitcher was the starting note of the evening, the rounds flowed freely and quickly.

Within an hour I perceived an alteration, altercations brewing. The beer kept coming, at an even faster pace, tongues loosened and tempers began seeping between lips. I felt my own mood souring from inattention and jealousy; I was annoyed with everyone, too much stupidity, flapping of tongues, I was repulsed by the collegiate atmosphere and kept wondering why the hell I was even there.

Around the table, I sat, watching and listening as half a dozen conversations melted into a caca-phonous buzz in my ears. Big earwad of shit. Some pennant race and who was going to win, a heated argument over a spilled beer and guilt and a spotted term paper, Kafka, Kafka, Kafka, chugalugluglug . . . I turned my head from the table just in time to boot up god knows how many cups of that rancid nickel beer. Nobody even noticed.

I went to the bathroom, rinsed my mouth and grabbed a handful of paper towels. Back by the table I cleaned up the puddle pretending I had spilled some beer which was basically true and didn't really matter: nobody asked.

As Franz Kafka awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic potato. He could see all around himself but that was the absolute extent; not himself, directly at all, only with concentration end-to-end, via the mirror above the chest of drawers, could he see himself fly-eyed, a super spud.

A dog of nondescription, vaguely sheeply black, nuzzled the door to the room open for the first time, squeezing its way through the door and swaggering into the middle of the room where it promptly threw up. While sniffling and licking at its own, recognizable pool of vomit the dog turned into Flann O'Brien, (who was) drunk as usual. He looked up and cursed his sodden appearance in the room, screaming Gaelic obscenities about the cruel trick, just as quickly ceasing in tirade upon discovering he still held, his right hand gripped tight 'round the bottle, the better part of a pint of plain.

He crawled over to a side of the room, sitting on the floor back against the wall, the empty hand sprawled flat for support, deciding, intuitively, to take a break from the action.

"Arbin siderin, mainbun thaynkun, yuhner Clem, saze tumersef, Bammer winchal serloff disol ferm en gitchal wondem conders donader flurda . . . "

"Damibammy, yain amakin anersains."

"Ssli datter aws towm . . . "

"Godder pler."

"Intake fader pigiron time butter burned fancy falter groan."

"Woozlenooze?" Flann bellows rubbing his crusty inflamed eyes, parting the lids with forefingers and thumbs greasy and filthy from a ten day run. He gets up, not staggering but tottering somewhat refreshed from his brief respite, in rolling stumbles he umbrella-steps to Franz lying in bed, incredulous, digging his fingertips into his eyes as he gives a long and low whistle, for lying in that bed is the biggest damned spud he's ever seen, ever's been seen, and he's totally unfamiliar with the story line.

The only reasonable response is as follows: he takes two straight-back chairs and with much exertion and sweat and clumsy miss-hits pounds them each with his boot heel top first a foot and a half into the end of the gigantic potato at the foot of the bed for feet. Expending even greater effort he twists the potato sideways on the bed, such that the chair-feet are sticking out over the floor. With the last of his strength he tilts and slides Franz chairs down into what could neither wrongly nor rightly, though in the context of the previous position and with the chair-feet as abetments perhaps rightly more so rightly, be called an upright standing-upright position. Flann returns to the remaining third of his bottle, gleefully, slurringly crowning Franz "Mr. Potatohead," before passing out.

--Silence--

--Fade out--

(Pause)

SPOTLIGHT

Mr. Potatohead: dances a jig on his new chair-legs, a quick 8-footed tap, chacha cha, launching into a wailing one-potato operatic mime (CHORUS imagined) endetailing the tragedies ensuffered by the Plain People of Ireland enduring the Great Potato Famine, circa the 19th Century.

Millions of starving Irishmen, families whole, steaming hordes and huddled massen cattle driven across the Atlantic in steerage, destination Ellis Island, sweatshops and slum brawls and occasionally beyond, the shrugging herds accompanied on one trip by a young man with dreams in his hands in his pockets, a strapping young Irish Jew traveling in coincidence, who fled not from hunger but because he couldn't figure out why he was in Ireland; it didn't make any sense.

In a flood of potatoes was the arrival of the progenitor Jimmy Michener of the lineage that led to this shell-shocked Sydney, to be accurate who was actually junk-shocked, same idea, same deeply lost wildly dead look to the eyes and the physical tendency to sling alongside the walls as a cat entering a strange room. Perhaps he's neither Irish nor Jewish, somebody's brother is what I'm told, I'll call him Sydney.

A big mint green Oldsmobile full of white faces cruises on down Avenue A to its base, it's Hodge at the wheel and S. S. Sydney jittery beside him, Lem(an) in the backseat with the two girls. At every corner, intersection where the light is red old Hodgy is afraid of figures jumping from the shadows to smear his windshield with greasy rags; green he squeals, they drive around and around in the night until they find themselves where they were trying to remember how to find, Rivington and Attorney junked up and burnt out, the ruined tenements ghastly, ghostly animals haunting the stoops rising and swarming to the big car with a white reason. Window down, squeaky Hodge, "No, no, where's Eddy? We want to talk to Eddy, Eddy's our man, thank you."

(The corner payphone, Ricky by day, Eddy by night: 674-9223.)

"No Eddy, Eddy no, no, no Eddy Eddy no. But I get, I get, get me, me get, good stuff, you get good stuff me."

"Oh. So Eddy's not here? No Eddy, Eddy no? Uh. Uh. Uh, excuse us a minute while we have a conference. Oh . . . well what do the rest of you think? What do you want to do?"

"Ask him what his name is, the young one, I like him."

"Yo, I me go get, good, me I get go good you."

"Well, what's your name, we like you, we trust you, are you Ricky?"

"Ricky yes no Eddy go yes no good Eddy Ricky get I me all Ricky go Eddy we all good go get Ricky us Eddy all get no yes go."

And Sydney wishes he wasn't there, he wonders why he even left his apartment that night or any night.

"Oh. Okay, here's the money and we like you, $100 and we want ten bags," all his fingers and thumbs, "that's ten, do you understand me?"

The minutes go and go and they sit in the car sensing, correctly, that something must be slightly awry. Someone goes over to the car and says more money, didn't give him enough money; Hodge assertively retorts he did so give him enough money, he knows exactly how much money he gave him and it was the exact amount of money, he should know, he counted it a dozen times. Someone goes back into the building and someone steps up to the car offering to get the money back.

"Good get I you."

Hodge is going to go in there and get things straightened out, damnit, he's going to go in there himself and straighten things out. He'll explain everything, he gets out of the car because he's going in there and . . . Lem(an) decides he better go in there with him. Firstly, the Hodge is a fool, a milquetoast and a bran muffin for breakfast, and somebody really ought to go in with him to keep him from condescending his way into an early death; secondly, the two girls are well-dressed and well aware that this and their gender precludes them from any obligation to budge (guys score with and for gals), and old Syd, he's translucent and melting down into the crack between the seat cushions; Lem(an) goes.

Inside the building is a long unevenly lit heavily scarred hallway, the two of them and someone, doors and doors fading and the door, just inside the vestibule where the money slides under and the junk slides back out, tiny glassine envelopes. Someone knocks and starts talking Spanish to someone on the other side. After a brief conversation their money slides back out. Someone picks it up and quicker Hodge picks it, plucks it, retrieves it back abruptly; now Hodge has the money right in his own hands, right where it most responsibly belongs.

"You go get good me I go good you."

"Yes, that's right, you get good, we trust you, we like you."

But instead someone comes slamming through the front door and pushes someone against the wall, Spanish screeches back and forth, machine-gun phrases, up and down and back against the wall.

"Ricky? Ricky! Eddy! Eddy?"

Someone pulls a big long knife that flickers wicked in the shadow and someone shouts back.

Hodge goes on, "Now Eddy Ricky no Eddy hey Ricky no no don't do that no now just be cool."

Now Hodge decides he's going to break up the knife fight while Lem(an) leans against the wall at a healthy respectable distance feeling like a movie and wondering when they're going to leave--if that damned fool wants to get himself all cut up he can go full steam ahead and I guess I'll just watch; personally I don't want to be a Post front-pager.

Someone knifeless bolts for the front door, they burst outside scattering down the steps; but now they're outside, they walk, they get into the car, a great big mint green Oldsmobile.

It's the time, now is me, now--I open the front passenger door, I jump into the car as the Big Guy, maybe I'm hispanic or maybe I'm a black man, any man, anyone knowing my opportunity is aknocking and I climb in aanswering, I seize the opportunity, so to speak, with my hands abared and eager.

Sydney swelters in December next to me.

"Yehyehyea, I getcha whatcha wan." Drive drive a block or two west, hang a left, good shit yeh, next time ask for Angel, getcha that good shit, park right here hey and see that building on the corner main drag, yeh, I go in there and getcha whatcha wan, real good shit yea, you'll see, hold tight and I'll be right back.

I go around the corner, I have $100 and I'm gone, man I'm gone.

It's Bye-bye City.

And they'll sit there, they'll sit there for awhile the way people sit when they don't want to acknowledge that what they're sitting, standing, waiting for is all fucked up. Like, sorry honey, but the ballet's sold-out. Nice big car and I'm gone, man I'm gone, and the corner building has sheet metal in place of windows, no front door, and I'm far long gone.

And the biggest investor, the girl in the short black skirt and blouse opened to showing her boobs and you know a good three-inch in spiked heels, eventually, I know she'll get out of the car, clackety-clack determined in her heels to find me. Lem(an), he'll get out to follow a wagging tongue-lolling puppydog, he'll follow two steps behind, trot-trotting along enthralled, amused, captivated and bewildered, and she'll run down rundown Delancey Street after midnight like a fairy tale princess who's misplaced her story and I'm gone, man, I'm so long gone.

Syd, he'll hop out the car door a gelatinous foible and take the next train home.

Which reminds me of those stories (or the one story repeated on endless, exhausting, often vacillating towards dull, occasions) I heard from my old friend Old Buddy quite a number of times about Door-happy Harry. A common friend of theirs, or rather, specifically, his friend through whom he had met Harry, had been in the Army with Harry, where they'd met stationed in West Germany or Europe. The friend had been in Armor; with his crew repainting their tank from drab to psychedelic, they placed a big chunk of thick tarry, cheap and easy, Turkish opium on the engine plate, running hot the inside a hazy den, they plowed through a barn and ran down fences until they were stopped by a lot of other tanks, and they still couldn't get kicked out, they drew solitary in separate holes. Harry was in Paratroops, jumping into the Black Forest in preparation for jumping into the Black Forest, he jumped out of planes and pulled his chute, the door was unlatched, the wind and pressure sliding it open with a slam deadly and final above the roar and Harry jumped right out. He cracked, Harry got door-happy and sent home with a pension. He was all right part of the time, and part right some of the time, left and right he was not right for right part of the time; a few times Old Buddy remembered a bunch of them driving around in a van just partying with cigar-sized joints and they had to keep an eye on old Harry, left to his own devices sometimes he'd slip and grow blank and lunge for the side door, road runner, road runner, going faster miles an hour: the side door hadn't been shut properly, the wind whistled through, they hit a rough spot on the highway jolting the latch the door slid open with a well-defined bang and Harry was out on a jump before anyone could turn to see, out that door and sailing away through the air, my friend's face screws up in a cackle every time, "and that was the end of him, man, 'cause he was splattered all over that road!"

Everything has gone dark, black, invisible or rather unseeable in that Franz no longer sees anything, nothing can be seen only felt. He touches what he used to see, he feels what he saw and has a craving for pickles; metamorphosed from a visual to a tactile world, his eyes have become appendages, arms and/or legs depending on perspective and definition, thin twisted and tubular tubercles, sickly frail off-white sprouting green and he can dance! Mr. Potatohead rocking increasingly unsteadily in a frenzied marathon Tarantula, don't stop till you get enough--go man, go!

He begins hurting in his so-called lower recesses, nether points, the pain he's been feeling grows incessantly, he totters and stumbles and one of the chair-leg's legs breaks dislodging a foul smelling chunk of softening potato as he collapses into the doorway. He remembers how they sat for months and months in a plastic bag in on the kitchen table, gnawed and scratched by a cat, in the summer heat a sweet odor of rot and a squadron of fruit flies calling them home, and strange bugs and the nastiness they left behind on the table top when they were picked up and heaved into the bushes out back; soft and shriveled he secretes a dark stickiness that oozes down the chair legs and drips onto the floor.

"One side of his body rose up, he was tilted at an angle in the doorway, his flank was quite bruised, horrid blotches stained the white floor, soon he was stuck fast and, left to himself, could not have moved at all, his legs on one side fluttered trembling in the air, those on the other side were crushed painfully to the floor--"

Crash and Flann wakes up, oh my head my aching head my head it hurts, it's throbbing and pounding, exploding and pulsating, it beats thumpa-thump thump thump thump thump . . . thumpa-THUMP THUMP thump. And a one, two, three, four. One, two, three and more and more and more.

"Damn tater!" Flann throws his empty bottle with amazing or sheer happenchance accuracy which smacks and sticks into Mr. Potatohead's corpulent side, impact sufficient still to push the spud through the doorway, falling to the floor with a deafening squash.

--Silence--

--Fade out--

(Pause)

NORMAL OVERHEAD LIGHTS

Flann remains slumped on the floor against the wall, motionless, terribly drunk and confused, left with nothing, no story, only an out-of-place sense in an out-of-the-way-and-sorts way. No more plain for the man without a friend & no more friend for the man without a plain.

A plan, a man needs a plan and a plain is the best plan.

The room is enveloped by a putridly sweet smell spreading, groggily he wants to get up and escape, flee the room, but he's too far gone to stand up or even think about moving at all, it gives him such vertigo, he can't decide which is less nauseating, the swimming room dominated by the twirling potato or the swirling star-flashing blackness behind his eyelids.

Flann pukes all over his arms crossed in his lap, gush after gush then gurgles slipping into unconsciousness, dry-heaving in his sleep subsiding into hiccups, spitty and messy, he slides to the floor and pisses himself.

you say you're going to make it big

someday you're going to be a big star baby

it's not that I doubt your integrity

it's just that I know it's never going to happen

look around, look around

on your knees, on your knees . . .

Clem declares these to be [some of the] Basic Truths:

Clem O'Hammer, by Clem McAxe, chapter entitled "Clem returns to Kentucky because he forgot something or lost something and retraces his steps":

The way I am the way I put things places the way I put things in their place, places, the places where I think they should go should be put, the best place for me to put it where I'll remember where I put it, but I never can and I never do.

I forget, I sit down and forget, I forget sitting hearing things.

The tendency whereby when I sit alone at home in the silence, the outside noises abate into unimportance, minuscule at night, I become accustomed to a sublevel of din, the apartment sounds amplified to a point where the tiniest rattle, groan or squeak unnerves me, I am convinced someone keeps knocking on the door or, the empty peephole reassures me, trying to break in through a window.

I go room to room, drawing down all the shades, I turn on the t.v. and sit down.

The line of the walls goes up and meets the two lines of the ceiling going over. Sleep sleep, why can't I sleep, late afternoon shoes go up and down the stairs, voices in the vestibule, one hour, two hours, sleep sleep, the doors bang noises like the factory nearby banging like the doors, shadows grinning on the walls that say sleep and laugh, sleep the bed becomes huge and then becomes tiny, hiding on the floor in the room that expands laughing and is a movie screen while the bed floats and hovers there and there and there and damn what was that and that and that and there it is again and again and again I hear it like a tiny crumble crumbling a little louder as though loose plaster pattering I wonder it is peering into the corner, the corner, it sounds like it's coming from the corner there by the fuse box and now I see it a little dust falling from the edge where the box was set into the wall oh is that all all sleep I'll sleep I sleep I sleep I hear it a larger rattling down from the hole, a slight hole, a hole slightly larger but I'll worry about it later after I sleep some more, some more sleep, more sleep, but what if, a heavier cascading, but what if I watch the hole spilling out chunks, what if it's someone trying to break in, rattle rattle, trying to drill into the apartment while I'm sleeping, while I'm supposed to be asleep, thought to be sleeping, pebbles to rocks and a giant corkscrew spins out of the hole lunging ten feet towards me and stops as I lie unable to move, waiting waiting I blink my eyes and the room is much darker, I can't, I really can't even see the corner, a door is open against it.

Coffee to his side on the arm of the couch, somewhat neglected, Lem(an) sips at it, half a cup retaining just a hint of warmth, thick and bittersweet from the sugar and grinds ringing the bottom, while he scans through the Voice Bulletin Board on the back cover. No, no fat or thin or depressed, gay married and balloons, self-help support groups strip-o-gram street fairs, straight down stopping only for personal and enigmatic ads.

No tattoos or computer workshops, models wanted spanish lessons, passion--for men, no.

Softball reunion psychic seminar, buttons, dreams no floatation center no.

No, 1. My grandfather collects dust and cataracts. 2. My brother lives a thousand miles away. 3. I have dark hair. 4. I'm right-handed. 5. I carry notebooks in a purple messenger's shoulder sack.

Click clack click cluck clack click cluck . . . clack clack clickcluckcluck . . . clack tic tic tic cluck cluck cluck cluck cluck cluck cluck, she's at the last landing tac tac tac, Cluck Cluck Cluck Cluck CLUCK CLUCK CLUCK. Ssssst Cacluck, her boot heels against the worn marble flags echoing up the stairwell after her. She jingles the keys opening her door, it slams shut and something rattles in Lem(an)'s apartment. Her bootsteps walk a perimeter on the other side of his walls CLONK CLONK CLONK CLONK Clonk clonk clonk into the furthest room.

My tennis shoes collect gutterwater. My gaze lives in your memory. I have pasty definition. I'm dumbfounded. I carry driving ambition in a mint green Oldsmobile.

Lem(an) turns on the television channeled indifference.

It's an old lady, I think, that must be a little poodle right by her, where am I? It must be Central Park, grass trees stone wall, that's right, that's right, and the old lady is standing on the southeast corner Central Park South and Sixth, trying to cross. Upon close up she's really old, so, so old, hiding under a big fur but her back is hunched and her face malamorphous dough, she keeps waiting and trying to cross the street to the park but the traffic refuses, cars constantly coming from one direction or another speeding straight forward like clumsy fatal rockets or screeching in turns left and right wide and narrow, while she is so, so ungently old old, having long outlived the usefulness of her body, she probably lives in one of those luxury palaces right there so she doesn't have to tax her body's last mechanical, rote years--elevators take her up and down and big cars take her to and fro, she has money and numbers to get anything she could possibly want brought up to her; once in a while, when she's up to it, she damn well will go ahead and take her little friend out to the park herself, get a little fresh air, remember how it used to be, see how the park looks up close, down close and see what her windows look like from across the street. But baby, ain't all the money in the world gonna buy you a ticket across that street, just cos your life's ending don't think for a minute that any of the rest is gonna stop cos if you do it'll be your last. Poor old gal, never get across that street, and little precious is about to dirty the sidewalk where everyone can see sure as hell she can't bend down and clean it up and she'll be arrested, she's going, she's going, hobbling into the street, a car swerves honking another, who's going to help? Where is she?

Long long down the Avenue, the perspective flattened and everything underwatery from the heat waves rising from the asphalt. That van, I've seen that van before, I'd recognize that van anywhere, Mr. Action at the wheel and the rest of the Tough Team inside ready for tough action. Dust kicked up the back wheels spinning accelerator floored the van squealing up Avenue of the Americas, swiping through the red light cars piling up on both sidewalks through plate glass boutiques and restaurants, the van skids and fishtails to a stop in the middle of the intersection, Nose and Leroy jump out of the back racing towards the old lady as their feet touch pavement, they each pick her up by a shoulder, Nose stuffing the poodle under his free arm like a sheepball, and run them across the street while Honorable and Mr. A. hold off the traffic with rapid bursts of machine gun fire. Mission accomplished they clamber back in the van. As he shuts the tail doors as the van takes off, Leroy lobs out a couple grenades for good measure calling cards; the T-Team leaves behind an ancient lady who waves as best she can, a reddish horizontal wrinkle in the bottom of her face parts slightly as she tries to say something, something inaudible in the roar of a dozen or more taxis beeping and bursting into flames and already ablaze. Back in the van Nose complaining scrapes off with a piece of cardboard, "How come I'm always the one who has to carry the dog? Just look at this, will you, I've ruined eight or nine shirts already this season." Leroy and Honorable "Awww" in chorus behind Mr. A.: "Shu-up fool. Row down the window and take it off. Throw it out. And keep the window rowed down. Smells like shit'n here."

Leroy had them let him off anywhere in Times Square is good, he jumped out at a red light all ready with his hat and dark glasses on and on he went down the sidewalk saying smoke smoke all the way to the closest subway entrance, whereupon, leaving not a trace, he vanished off the face of the earth and caught a 2 train back up to Harlem.

"What A Feeling," a light throaty whisper, "Flashdance? Didn't that win an Oscar?"

"I'm sure it won over many an Oscar."

But what he really wanted in the paper was a boat, damn an $800 a month piece of shit studio--17 thou for a boat with engines and sails, full quarters plus amenities docked on the East or Hudson, low monthly fee, and then he could sail. Could simply cast off any old time and say, "Hey, great idea, let's head off down the coast," any coast, all the coasts, whatever.

She said, "You should get Mike to go get his boat and come up here. I'm sure you two would have a blast."

SMALL ROWBOAT APPARENTLY MAKES TRANS-ATLANTIC CROSSING

in a journey of trans-Atlantic proportion; a fifteen foot dinghy drifted from America to France while its crew was too inebriated to notice. When questioned by authorities at the American embassy as to the reasons behind such a treacherous voyage, the captain replied, "I dunno. Last thing I remember me and Mike was just off the coast of Florida pulling our way best the best way through two cases of beer, and when I wake up we're surrounded by all these people gabbering away in French or something while I'm wrestling with the biggest goddamn hangover of my life."

Jacob floated through the cow pasture, still waters dripping from a running faucet, deep green rolling and placid. Funny cows, he thought, drifting by with just an occasional plunger stroke, big black recliners at the ceiling straining to be set back right on the powder grey floor, in the topsy-turvy world, funny thing about cows, how on grass they stand up like tables and pianos and on water their legs stare stiff and knobby up at the clouds like your pet canary resting in grit and guano in the morning after a cold snap. He duck swam up alongside one, ahoy, permission to come aboard, cows are horses when they're upside down, giddyap, giddyap, get along little dogie, it's your misfortune and none of my own. But ole Bessie was stubborn as a mule, under all prodding she swayed and rocked gently, Jacob Douglas wept intently, he was a child, a thimble man astride his goldfish swimming upside down in the bowl in his room. That's what they were, bigger blacker and leggier, his goldfish in the morning, after school, sometime before dinner, the black ones with bulging eyes, he cried me a river, saline and saline an ocean for them all. He couldn't call out their names; he didn't recall a single one, they all rolled over so fast in a series his backbrain hollered out: one month, one week, one day, one hour with bizarre precision. Then cam a Siamese fighting fish, dull maroon and navy, attacking raw balls of uncooked hamburger as they settled on the multicolored gravel and grew soft and white, collecting like cow eyes, that lived longly and namelessly to the day it disappeared, vanished in a one gallon bowl, going the only place it could have gone, swimming up the spiral of a solitary sea shell, a limp bedraggled tail fin barely visible.

"I am the fisher of men, the sinker of cows," sliding down from belly to bed, mouth-to-mouth sucking out Bessie's last gasp; she sank like a truck while he mooed his raft firm.

ly in control, a firmer firmness rupturing upward towards the firmament, Lem(an) came all over Oral Dix's face as she pulled away to watch the results of her hands-off handiwork, splat pelted, tiny shell-less eggs against a wall soft as a baby's butt, except it was like someone with lung congestion honkering against walls aren't soft unless they're Oldenberg's, but he sure as hell couldn't make a face like hers, like a wall made out of baby butts.

Crossing her eyes even though it hurt a little, she watched a snotty drop slide down the bridge of her nose to the tip, a matter of exquisite timing, her frog tongue flitted out, shagging the drop midair. She wiped the side of her finger down her cheek, then flipped it in her mouth, sucking it clean with a loudly exaggerated slurp.

Pop.

"Lemin would die to be in my position right now. Simply here, he'd have my face squeaky clean."

"Shut up."

"Oh, but you know he worships every little crease in your jeans. And he has such a nice car."

"Yea, and his last car was also pretty nice until he plowed it into that bridge, and then said it was because the whole road had suddenly, literally, jumped or slid ten feet to the left."

Ten feet to the left, that was Clem's guess, he squinted hard, that was his estimate he'd say, ten feet left from the sink Alabama'd be in front of the stove ten feet left from the sink where she was, he squinted hard from in the sunlight so harsh and white it'd blind any man fool enough not to squint. Blind you or make you go crazy or both. Crazy blind man. Ten feet over and you go blind crazy and you're in the middle of the road and you're practically begging to be run down, killed like any vermin foolish enough to freeze up.

Go cat, go!

The road verved to the left with Clem still plowing straight, with relief the sound of crashing and cracking, it went thud groan splinter, going right through the pasture fence--americana white worn--rotting. Straight through a cow field, the smear of fresh cow pies clinging to the blade, Clem decreed: any damn cow get in my way I'll slice it in two, like a cold knife through hot butter, if it get in my way, like Sherman to Atlanta, I plow a steady course.

Another dusty afternoon, cicadas clicking and belch and fall out of trees upon you, they lie on their backs spinning circles in the dust, the air is a solid block of stagnant heat, the cicadas sing their dusty heavy songs in the trees and fall down on top of you like leaves tumbling under the weight of hot dust, everything wilts limp brown and still and silent except the cicadas humming dusty hot tunes in the trees and the croaking buzz when they drop down on top of you, crusty old wing bombs.

Alabama stood like a solitary post on the back porch all alone excepting the porch posts which actually supported the porch roof while she held up just her hand wiping the sweat from her brow and shielding her eyes from the glare as she absently scanned the horizon washing magenta. To put it in Clem's very words, "Red sky at night, plowers' delight," away for days and the connecting nights, Bammy knew he wouldn't be back from the fields leastwise couple more days, canna stanna allerlone allertime, holler inside, "Coma Zaggy Bonz, stur stur, weeble needle nightie tone, Zagger goethe stur."

So Old Dish did the natural thing, the paper open in her lap; she flipped straight to the movie ads, her eyes settling on the toughest looking graphics. She picked up the receiver and dialed. "Hey Salience, Orl, wanna go to a movie? yea, great one playing, called The Car Where Rock Lives, okay, yea, around eight."

A reign of bottles, epithets whistling by Clem's mule ears--he pricks them up, mule dear.

Lem(an) is hungry, "I'll pay to have a pizza delivered if it'll mean I won't have to take one step out of this dump, go outside; today I am too tender."

Clem brays for all plowers, churning through sweat and sinking in mire, drowning, "I smell the reeking of:

& in closing only ask why it is that such basic observations of truth must so consistently remain in the realm of the slip-showing obvious."

Ring your sock out.

It's ocher.

Azure like.

I green.

The face is turned to the window, seated next to the train window, turned and looking at itself. The train is brightly lit, the car not very full, no one standing, bright with a light that is dull flat and even. The face is turned to the face in the window and outside the car, the train window, dark as the train travels underground through a tube beneath the river.

Unable to decide if the face is uniquely attractive or instead plain, the malformed ugliness of sameness, it looks at its reflection then straight through, beyond to the tunnel wall passing quickly, vaguely, momentarily illuminated by the window light of the speeding train, the car is passing. Cables and pipes hovering in the window, and the face that looks at itself and then past, the animated wall.

The face in the window is a first quarter moon with a nose and lips that seep darkness, an eye stares at itself out of the darkness. The gaze embarrasses me and I smile looking past to the wall again.

The fluorescent tunnel lights come in series like camera flashes, shotgun blasts, my eye goes blind while the faraway one watches strained, the darkened face in rapid pulsations staccato glow, ghostly white green, slick damp tunnel moss green.

My face is a skull in three-quarters profile, now it's become an x-ray, my face is a tinted photographic negative and then all is dark; gradually my face eclipsed reemerges in front of the wall.

Clem, up against a wall: backside broad and flat. Plowing, Clem up against a wall: heritage whored and benign. Clem Plows up against a wall: destiny adorned and hoarded. But Clem plows.

This is not easy. It breaks your back, but not with a quick snap. You wear holes in your shoes, then your socks; eventually your feet start to rot. Escape is only through extreme cleverness and mostly inconsequential.

At some point it was the fall or very late summer of 1980 that I was given the socks, used, part of a bag of undesired clothing for lordy knows what reason brought over, as in the sense of 70 miles west on I-64 by the unfortunate girlfriend of the time, athletic tube socks as is fancied, somewhere I suppose, white with triple stripes of true blue blue, the middle strip thicker. In keeping with my personal axiom of never turning down a pair of socks so that I'll never have to go out somewhere and buy my own, I accepted them, pulled them on, twirling my ankles, no questions instinctually.

Several years thinned into holes widening to two-inch diameters cupping my heels I decided it made perfect sense to wear the socks upside down, tube socks, unnoticeable yet gaining more miles per sock.

The overall thinness and years of rough washing demeaned the socks doubly within three months' time.

On August 22nd, 1984, I made History by becoming the first person ever to give a sock just a quarter twist, holes engaping both left and right ankle bone protrusions, discovering the third while anticipating the potential fourth plane of sock wearability.

Jacob D. rightfully declares the discovery, "All men are divine who have the Blood of God surging through their veins."

Quoting fresh from memory, "Jesus as Plumber as in a medical disguise, the Flusher of Veins clean of fatty globules and cholesterol pâté, allowing the Blood of God to course swiftly and freely and mightily."

And Jesus so bespoke etc. etc. at the Last Pool Party:

"I know the popular interpretation attributes all the significance as sexual," Lem(an) smiles at me in pausing, lifting his brows, "but when I start dreaming about lots of water it's the dehydration from all the alcohol I put away before bed. My mouth's parched but I'm too incapacitated to wake up and reach for the glass of water on the nightstand. Now, sometimes I go swimming, or just find myself around a swimming pool, strolling around, and sure as showers on the weekend I spend most the dream pissing or looking for places to go. Not much arousing about the thought much less fact of a wet bed, except in the _______________

536From the suppressed apocryphal book, the Gospel According to the Pagan Savant Cum Saint Douglas.

sense that I'll crawl out of bed at four in the morning to avoid it. The one time there was any connection, however remotely, with sex, it didn't have anything to do with me. I was just forced up one night as usual, and one of my roommates was locked away in the bathroom with her boyfriend. By all rights, logics and natures I should have been compelled to go wizz in her bed, but drunkenness overrides everything, and I had infinitely more pleasure using the empty wine bottle in my room, which was fine, four liters with a wide mouth."

A POIGNANT MOMENT IN ROCK'S LIFE--an earwitness accounting:

Rock weaves and wanders around the room sort of like a spider, sort of like a cockroach, mostly like an opened umbrella caught in a swirl of wind. The sound of Rock is bumps and thuds. Stumbling he speaks, "Man, really pisses me off."

His noises wake me out of a fevered sleep. A wall away he was, but still, I can hear him. I lay delirious unable to ascertain if Bud was there and quiet, the second lowered voice I think I hear could be my hallucination and Rock is fucked up late at night, pacing his room, talking to himself, he says, " . . . ," he says, I hear something, something more, "man I dunno, fuckin' pissin' me off . . . ," something like, " . . . last to find out . . . fuckin' whore she is . . . don't give a shit about that, but . . . . Man! But seein' her there like that with him, oh man, really fuckin' piss me off."

her mouth being one such that even at rest it was turned down in a perennial frown, creased defining from the lower lip flabby to the tip of the chin as distinctive, set off from the rest of the face, a ventriloquist's simpleton or the more so, cheaply tanned olive, a bullfrog verging on a deep flatulent croak. Her brows were knit together falsely.

Clem by Clem, from the originally expurgated chapter entitled, "You Call It Love? You Call It Love? Well That's Some Word.":

My place, as I sit down, I sit down with my lunch, my lunch is a roll from yesterday topped with soggy burnt onion flecks, a bag of chips and a Coke, my place for lunch in Bryant Park, always available, for me to sit down, reservation for one please, is the concrete block, stoop or stool up to the water fountain in the northwest quadrant. Some people walk over not knowing there is no faucet or handle, the bowl is lined over drain with perpetual rain dampened leaves left over from last fall, the one before than, the drain a misnomer for evaporation. When in the area, I sit here and eat my lunch or afterwards from a slice of pizza from cattycorner across Sixth. Just sit and smoke, shiver in the appropriate seasons.

After such regularity, I think approaching today, I'd think my presence would have become an advertisement, in the nice weather the benches are always just packed, but still my spot is vacant. Never at any time have I seen someone sitting there. At the sister fountain, functioning fine, in the southwest arena, a pair of black women always stand stooped assiduously rinsing out their shopping and garbage bags of five cent deposit cans and bottles and plastic ones like women in India and their clothes and the Ganges, they heave and sigh and chat one another against the backdrop of the park's major brazen drug dealers.

Today I have vistas! The three benches in front of me a straight line, becoming representations of points, the flanking two seemingly equidistant from the center one directly across the flagstone walk from me, defining the base of an isosceles triangle for which I am the fourth point the apex. This is so familiar. The benches are backless, parallel slats or boards of two by whats resting on concrete arches as legs. The timber is painted dark park bench green while the rests are cast concrete in color, in contour, in texture, in fact.

At my right: at the far end of that bench she sits birdie like, precariously perched as though on edge though she is really spread out, though to her point perched birdlike consciously not chirruppy like a sparrow but dully fallacious and stolen from magazine fashion models, to-the-tee she would imagine, head a pinnacle point although ass soft and spread, an island amidst a dark sea park bench green, well within a margin of physical comfort.

She is perching, however, finished with lunch, head wobbling around streaked shades of make-up, ready to take flight though she would have denied it, taking offense and fear, stupid bumbled words, then perhaps so at the mention of it; the only thing that keeps her roosted is a firm claw grip on a long half-sipped ice watery large soda from either of the two nearby burger franchises: it anchors her to the bench.

The man next to her, from a whole space and a half away, seems anxious and embarrassed that he is still eating, a messy orange pasta dish in a take-out foil tin at that, plastic fork. As his mouth chews away occupied he is frustrated by all the things he could think to say to her that sound great until he thinks about them, chomps them up and down to the rhythm of his jaw, grinding everything into foolish mush.

When he's finished, mouth wiped clean, he too now has just a half gone cup of soda to rivet him to the ground, to keep him from taking flight, to keep him from his flight; and instances and happenchances generated by the park to pick from, comment wittily upon with a confidential and positive turn of his head to which she replies, breaking repose, betraying her basic unattractiveness with a backward toss of her head and a stifled horse snort.

But when he runs out of things to say, he strains and haunts himself desperately, settling into an awkwardness beyond any prediction, totally fixated on forming another sentence to reattract her, who responds to frantic pauses with frenetic boredom. She keeps jerking her head back, her sighs are dense roaring gusts, she attains aloofness with her crossed leg twitching spasmodically.

The horny male pigeons fluff their plumage up tough and their little dicks appear tiny white sticking out, they rustle around the nervous hens deep throat crying coo-oo, coo-oo. The hens are skittish skirting about infinitely more interested in some breadcrumbs, twists of pretzels, plain old grit and gravel.

To the left: my head turning back and forth, she too pretending to be huddled in a cold private space on the edge, but her leaning forward bent with her arms pressed tight in to hands crumpled, one clutching something while like napkin in her lap, convinced she's the prototypical noli me tangere. Her face is a contorted mask of her bitchy bitterness and the tears she should be, now is, rightfully shedding, well knowing how they help to drive her score even further, she dabs at her eyes for effect. He lightly runs his hand down her bare arm; she gives no response that he has. Now now, he might have said to her except he's too busy, in occasional hushed asides to her angry tears, explaining his feelings. Her eyes flash at him behind those tears, she turns to stone again. He is tired of all this; her eyes are hard and flat.

The cocks cock, everyone is explaining their feelings, they go coo-oo, gently coo-oo.

Midway each time: the bench directly facing me, I sit facing it viewed a sketch put on whenever I happen to be here. Read like a sentence this one goes: space with wax paper wrappings from a lunch related to the gentle sloping of a hispanic girl leaning cushioning her slant against her boyfriend sitting upright with a space and a half until a slightly built man bespectacled and thinning hair eating from a cardboard box of chicken not quite at the extreme edge of the bench.

Two hens sway down the walk, they cluck pointing out banalities to each other as if recent inventions or dress styles. I can't imagine the cocks ever attempting to pester them, they fully contented one might include thrilled to be carrying lunch in a take-out bag, brown, their heads twisting impatiently to find two bench spaces, of course concurrent, and quick, quickly near. More advantageous locations close by they stop between me and the bench the absolute closest.

One makes the decision, the other immediately sitting down right next to the chicken man, who rearranges his vittles and litter with an inconvenienced flutter. Sitting, she is unable to comprehend why food isn't instantly in her mouth, arms moving instinctually, emptily, the legs of a beetle stranded on its back; standing, there isn't enough room for her between her and the boy, and she carries the food. Sitting, she nudges over the man irritated in his meekness complying fitting all his things in his hands and lap wishing he was finished with no shred of desire to remain; standing, she taps the boy on his shoulder to move over, uncaring in her unawareness of her insolence. Away from his girl's his eyes are hatred, shaking his torso in a snakish roll that doesn't really cede an inch. Obliviously determined she wiggly plants her ass down in the space many sizes too small; the force of the descending hips slide her tighter against the chicken man, overhanging the edge ashamed by his inability to react against the increasingly uncomfortable imposition. A long draw of soda up the straw, his is a face disliking being there anymore.

The ladies spread out for lunch, their legs spreading widely tables they cover with napkins in a grotesque accustomed ritual, completely unfolded layer upon layer. They take forever getting settled, flapping their elbows in need of more room. Their faces reflect the emptiness within--cuckoo-o-o--shovels and coal to boilers, empty bellies twice the volume of the empty heads capacitate enough to guide hands to forks to mountainous helpings of salad-bar get-ups in plastic troughs: ten dozen types of fixings assiduously arranged in neat piles smeared together with downswoops of forks. Bit by bite their appetites proving equals to their capacious bellies, sickening me into stuffing the remaining third of my roll inside the half-left bag of chips, crumpling, down beside my foot for later disposal after break, after a cigarette or usually two.

The pigeons bite into stray chunks of pretzels, snagging mouthfuls in upward flicks of the heads flipping the rest through the air. Up, backwards, lost, and gone.

Back to the ladies, the first one plain as dirt, cheeks pouched out like a hamster, chew chew swallow. They want to talk garbage but can't quite manage continuously while decimating their hordes. I glare at the second. Sophistication, domination, her skin tone strikes me as artificial, her face pinched out of a glob of putty. Her eager speech starts in midchew, a string of lettuce slathered orange with French dressing dangles from the corner of her mouth, hanging down to her chin for far too long.

Strips like that drip completely excruciatingly unnoticed.

I find it impossible to remain another minute.

Must've been drunk, Clem thinks, figures, sure must of been drunk. It's like always, must've been drunk, times I go and do things like that usually am, nothing I'd never done if I was in my right mind, these times I get wailing drunk, though I'd hardly say the sober side is what I'd call my right mind, my mind's right for something, ripening, way afar from where I stand. That's why I gotta plow, slice through any old bird gets in my way, country grackle or city pigeon, no damn fence, no damn wall.

. . . in the bushes in a bar I was a few good ones into the sail, when I absently tack and should I turn around and sitting right there the next stool down next to me, I turn for the first time the evening to study the man next to me, on the stool right next to me the whole time I've been there, and surprise of surprise if it's not Myles na gCopaleen, looking equally startled to suddenly discover that it was me who sat down and been sitting there drinking next to him these past several hours.

As befits the delighted besotted, potted, we each ordered up another for the other. Standing in our drinks we got around and remembernisced, faith being the last time I was over by his house, his missus was out and about as were we a dozen bottles of stout, we plowed die lange lange Straße entlang in the livingroom and how he got about to the talking to me about us, kept me rolling on the floor.

"Inebriates, as a class, are despised (chiefly by people who cannot afford to drink) but a more particular derision is reserved for the inebriate's idea that he can see, and has in fact seen pink rats. The incorrigible phenomenalism that is conferred by protracted and malignant sobriety makes the idea of pink rats laughable. But rats are pink. Of that there is of course no doubt whatever. (Roots in 'coat' pocket, pulls out huge squirming black rat, obviously native of Murmansk, the coarse heavy coat and scaly tail almost visibly swarming with bubonic germs.) You see? It looks black, even these razor-sharp claws--see?--are black. (Rat whistles fiercely and snaps at captor.) But let us see. We must not be deceived by appearances, here or elsewhere. (Has suddenly plugged in electric razor, pinioned rat on knee and is deftly shaving it.) Now we are getting somewhere. Knowledge is vouchsafing us a glimpse at her treasures. See? The rat is pink. (Rat, plunging wildly, is held up by tail, seen to be half original size, completely devoid of hair, but pink.) There is therefore no aberration necessarily involved in the infra-fur inspection of rodents on the part of vinous zoologists. (Rat emits shrill venomous barks, shorn fur on floor begins to move nearer fire.) None whatever. We have nailed still a further lie and we have done perhaps enough for one day. (Rises, winks broadly, takes up wife's handbag, opens it, stuffs in infuriated whistling rat, closes and replaces bag, which jumps about for a time.) I will be in later on tonight if you wish to look in for a game of backgammon. Her nibs if you please is off to a temperance meeting in the Mansion House."

My right hand slaps down on the bar a couple bills for the next round while my left imitates the gesture on his closer knee, "Wail buddy, you're sure the best little pony that's galloped these parts in a moocow's life."

At a dark little table off in the unlit corner back by the urine closets Monsieur Breton and Herr Bernhard can be seen steeped in emphatic conversation of a declaratory drunken nature. Go on over past passing by on the pretense of heading back to drain the lizard and then snatch a little overheard earful.

"There is no use being alive if one must work."

"Instead of committing suicide, people go to work."

"The event from which each of us is entitled to expect the revelation of his own life's meaning is not earned by work."

"Correction correction, waiter bring me the cheek, check, I mean chick."

Wearing a t-shirt emblazoning Work is the scourge of the drinking class Mister Bukowski bumbles by, butts in, bursts out a geyser of used beer across them.

Clem, by Clem:

"Aw shut you up Clem, you're just drunk again. Go on home, willya."

"& Fashion is the opiate of the idiots."

"Beauty will be congenital or will not be made-up."

In the bathroom of the basement band room, magic-markered on the raw plywood wall, catch-the-eye radiating out in proclamation from the dense pattern of graffiti covering every wall from stoop level to stretching up on the toilet as a footstool:

LIVE HARD AND DIE OUT OF TOWN

JACK IT AROUND--THE EMBARRASSMENT

while upstairs up on stage they were driving it hard, plowing an' achurnin' away--

Off in a booth off away tucked nearly out of sight one feels when sitting in it though that's one hundred percent illusion, everyone from just about anywhere in the bar plain as day can peep, cheap cigarette burn scarred and mentionably sticky stained plastic red white checked tablecloth providing the only measurable margin of marginable measure of discretion, that's where sat Rock and guess which female character, sluttishly, part the seas and stuff.

ROCK GOES DISCO BLOWS

Just acooing and awooing.

Disco as in Disco Belle, a.k.a. Oral Dix, D.C., Dixie Candy.

I never used to believe the things like this never did to ever happened in real life, at least not to me, but after what is happeneding to me tonight right now . . . she was a randy bitch.

ODed parodying, partaying, praying right down on her knees, her hands crawled all over my crotch, she unzipped my jeans and my totem pole sprung right out, flapping against her nose, under the table, right there in the fucking bar, down on her knees under the fucking table carving my timbre with her tongue, Ooh, Ahh, Whoa-a-whoa whoa. She gulp-swallowed the whole thing down to the root, a moist might sword sheathed to the hilt. She started slurping and sucking it like a vacuum cleaner in the hands of a mad housewife like she was born with it sticking down her throat. After that I couldn't hold no back no more it feels so good. My lap gave the old heave-ho and I flooded her stomach with millions of gallons of baby snot; she couldn't take all of it and it spewed out between her lips gushing to the floor spilling filling the room up and up and on up the entire bar swimming in my jizz, tables and chairs bobbing in the waves.

She wrote to me about it saying, "--what else could I do? I was so entranced by the name, accent, rotten teeth, dirty fingers, thin body that I took this honest to goodness bum bum (who actually lived in the men's shelter last winter) into the girls' bathroom for a quick fuck. Well, the girls inside were so scandalized, despite my cries of 'piss in the sink asshole' they called the bouncers and we were physically thrown out of the bar."

Clem says:

tree topping

window washing

horizontally, six feet of vertical nothing poking up amid a million acres of that good old horizontal.

I was disguised with drink in the bag in my cups stewed to the gills under the weather under the table, but I was not yet full as a tick nor ever the worse for drink, not until much later when nothing matters a hoot or a huck.

Eventually, I later went home and rounded out or squared off the night with a lengthy talk to Ralph on the porcelain phone before succumbing to the ravages of gravity, guts twisting in defiance.

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