I met an old drunk on the street one afternoon. I used to know him from the days with Betty when we made the rounds of the bars. He told me that he was now a postal clerk and that there...

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)....

our marriage book, it says. I look through it. they lasted ten years. they were young once.

it is justified all dying is justified all killing all death all passing, nothing is in vain

There were times when Frank and I were friendly with Chuck, Eddie and Gene. But something would always happen (usually I caused it) and then I would be out, and Frank would be partly ou...

I drank for the next week. I drank night and day and wrote 25 or 30 mournful poems about lost love. It was Friday night when the phone rang. It was Mercedes. “I got married,” she said, ...

as the orchid dies and the grass goes insane, let’s have one for the los… met an old man and a tired whore

when I was in grammar school my parents were poor and in my lunch bag there was only a peanut butter sandwich.

screen like a burglar to take your… the snake had crawled the hole, and she said, tell me about yourself.

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

Christmas eve, alone, in a motel room down the coast near the Pacific— hear it?