Cool Black Air

often from my typing room I step out into this small
balcony
and there is the night
a cool wash of black air.
I stand in slippers, shorts and undershirt, sucking at
a small cigarette, I can see the curling headlights of
the cars on the winding Harbor Freeway.
they come and come, those lights, they never stop
and I truly wonder that life is still here
after all these centuries, after the hell of
all our error and our smallness and our
greed, our
selfishness, our bitterness,
life is still here
and the thought of that makes me strangely
elated.
of course, I am woozy from hours of
typing.

and now
the same dog in that yard to the far left barks at me
again.

he should know that old fart standing there in his shorts,
he should know me by now.

I turn and walk back into my typing room.

the typewriter is electric and it is on and it
hums hums hums hums.

last night I did something very odd: after ripping out
a few poems
I covered the machine
then bent down and kissed it once, and said,
"thank you, very much."

after 50 years in the game I had finally thanked my
typewriter.

now I sit down to it and I BANG IT, I don't use the light
touch, I BANG IT, I want to hear it, I want it to do its
tricks, it has saved my ass from the worst of women and the
worst of men and the
worst of jobs, it has mellowed my nightmares into a gentle
sanity, it has loved me at my lowest and it has made me
seem to be a greater soul than I ever
was.

I BANG IT   I BANG IT

and I know how all of them felt, all the writers, when it was
going good, when it was going hot.

death, I have chopped off your arms and your legs and your
head.

I am sorry, I know you just do what you have to
do.

even to that barking dog

But now
I BANG IT
BANG IT

and wait.