professors and wives and girlfriends gone home
as stale as their arrivals;
2nd. rate, 3rd. rate, 4th. rate writers gone home
unimproved;
beercans, beerbottles, under my typewriter, under my chairs;
chicken bones, dry and demented, cutting my
bare feet;
chunks of pretzel, beercaps, a book of poetry by a Canadian...
everybody's gone now...
the insults still scrabble about the room in
shadows...
just another god damned party...
"Look, Barker, who ya teachin' besides McKuen?"
"English poets of the 20th. century..."
"A lousy gang, aren't they?"
"No, they're all right..."
the professors are always the most difficult, I don't know why--they're precious and frightened and angry--
but that whole gang is unbearable:
"A roomful of writers," I said, "the lowest of the breed, lower than the horseplayer, lower than the professional wrestling fan..."
how they sat, afraid to bare the little they had,
saving it for...