around 2 a.m. in my small room after turning off the poem machine for now

I hear them outside: “does he always type this late?” “no, it’s very unusual.” “he shouldn’t type this

The boys on Dorsey station didn’t know my problems. I’d enter through the back way each night, hide my sweater in a tray and walk in to get my timecard: We had a game going, the black-w...

I would, of course, prefer to be w… instead of with a photograph of an… to the sound of the anvil chorus a… girls kicking high, showing everyt… but I might as well be dead right…

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

Then I was called down to personnel at the old Federal Build– ing. They let me sit the usual 45 minutes or hour and one half. The man walked me back to a desk. There sat this woman. She...

30 dogs, 20 men on 20 horses and o… and look here, they write, you are a dupe for the state, the… you are in the ego-dream, read your history, study the monet…

That night I took Tammie to the harness races. We went upstairs to the second deck and sat down. I brought her a program and she stared at it a while. (At the harness races, past perfor...

Then the supervisor moved us to a new aisle. We had been there ten hours. “Before you begin,” the soup said, "I want to tell you some– thing. Each tray of this type of mail must be stuc...

I was back in L.A. about a week and a half. It was night. The phone rang. It was Cecelia, she was sobbing. “Hank, Bill is dead. You’re the first one I’ve called.” “I’m so glad you came ...

yeah sure, I’ll be in unless I’m… don’t knock if the lights are out or you hear voices or then I might be reading Proust if someone slips Proust under my d…

the branches break, the birds fall… the whores stand straight, the bombs stack, evening, morning, night, peanutbutter,

I stayed five days and nights. Then I couldn’t get it up any more. Joanna drove me to the airport. She had bought me a new piece of luggage and some new clothing. I hated that Dallas-Fo...

At Mt. Justin, biology class was neat. We had Mr. Stanhope for our teacher. He was an old guy about 55 and we pretty much dominated him. Lilly Fischman was in the class and she was real...

But there were some good moments. My sometime friend from the neighborhood, Gene, who was a year older than I, had a buddy, Harry Gibson, who had had one professional fight (he’d lost)....