this poet he’d been drinking 2 or 3 days and he walked out on the stage and looked at that audience and he just knew he was going to do it. there was a grand piano on stage and he walke...

On the elevator up, I was the only white man there. It seemed strange. They talked about the riots, not looking at me. “Jesus,” said a coal black guy, "it’s really something. These guys...

believe in earning one’s own way but I also believe in the unexpect… gift and it is a wondrous thing when a woman who has read your wor…

a poem is a city filled with stree… filled with saints, heroes, beggar… filled with banality and booze, filled with rain and thunder and p… drought, a poem is a city at war,

I’m not going to die easy; I’ve sat on your suicide beds in some of the worst holes in America,

I was in the 4th grade when I found out about it. I was probably one of the last to know, because I still didn’t talk to anybody. A boy walked up to “Your mother has a hole . . .”—he to...

old grey-haired waitresses in cafes at night have given it up, and as I walk down sidewalks of light and look into windows

Phillipe ’s is an old time cafe off Alameda street just a little north and east of the main post office. Phillipe’s opens at 5 a.m.

the drifting of the mind. the slow loss, the leaking away. one’s demise is not very interesti… from my bed I watch 3 birds throug… one coal black, one dark brown, th…

Wednesday night found me at the airport waiting for Iris. I sat around and looked at the women. None of them—except for one or two—looked as good as Iris. There was something wrong with...

I know a woman who keeps buying puzzles Chinese puzzles blocks

I began receiving letters from a girl in New York City. Her name was Mindy. She had run across a couple of my books, but the best thing about her letters was that she seldom mentioned w...

the critics now have me drinking champagne and driving a BMW and also married to a socialite from