a free 25-page booklet

      dying for a beer dying

       for and of life

       on a windy afternoon in Hollywood

       listening to symphony music from my little red radio

       on the floor.

      a friend said,

       “all ya gotta do is go out on the sidewalk

       and lay down

       somebody will pick you up

       somebody will take care of you.”

      I look out the window at the sidewalk

       I see something walking on the sidewalk

       she wouldn’t lay down there,

       only in special places for special people with special $$$$

       and

       special ways

       while I am dying for a beer on a windy afternoon in

       Hollywood,

       nothing like a beautiful broad dragging it past you on the

       sidewalk

       moving it past your famished window

       she’s dressed in the finest cloth

       she doesn’t care what you say

       how you look what you do

       as long as you do not get in her

       way, and it must be that she doesn’t shit or

       have blood

       she must be a cloud, friend, the way she floats past us.

      I am too sick to lay down

       the sidewalks frighten me

       the whole damned city frightens me,

       what I will become

       what I have become

       frightens me.

      ah, the bravado is gone

       the big run through center is gone

       on a windy afternoon in Hollywood

       my radio cracks and spits its dirty music

       through a floor full of empty beerbottles.

      now I hear a siren

       it comes closer

       the music stops

       the man on the radio says,

       “we will send you a free 25-page booklet:

       FACE THE FACTS ABOUT COLLEGE COSTS.”

      the siren fades into the cardboard mountains

       and I look out the window again as the clasped fist of

       boiling cloud comes down—

       the wind shakes the plants outside

       I wait for evening I wait for night I wait sitting in a chair

       by the window—

       the cook drops in the live

       red-pink salty

       rough-tit crab and

       the game works

       on