"And so," said Miss Blackbourne, "this is it. Endless nights of smoking and drinking and wallowing in nonsense. And you grow older, unless of course you die first, your body and your mind become both more feeble, and then one day, suddenly, if you're lucky, you drop dead. Write me a poem about that, poet boy."
"You mean right now?" said Milford.
"You say you're a poet, write me a poem."
"But, as I said I think, I am a bad poet."
"Then compose me a bad poem."
Go ahead, said the voice in his head. What do you have to lose?
"Well, okay," said Milford. "I guess I'll need some paper –"
"Bag that jive," she said. "Give me an extemporaneous poem, just the way the first poets did it, sitting around the campfire in their caves."
Don't blow it, said Stoney his alter ego. Just let it rip, daddy-o.
Milford took a drag of his Husky Boy. Cigarettes always helped. Well, no, they didn't always help, but they didn't hurt. But then how would he know what helped or hurt, since he had never written a single good line of poetry himself?
Just start with one good line, said Stoney. Do you think you can manage that much?
Milford remembered he still had his scotch-and-soda sitting right there, not even half empty, and, once again forgetting his drinking problem, he lifted the glass and drank, and when he set it down it was empty but for a few globules of ice at the bottom.
"I'm waiting," said Miss Blackbourne.
"Yes, of course, I'm sorry," said Milford. "I was just gathering my, uh, thoughts."
"That's the worst thing you can do," she said. "Now begin."
Milford, his mind devoid of ideas, began.
"It's easy to waste your life,
people do it all the time.
You're born, you cry,
and before you know it,
it's time to die.
And as you lie on your final bed
you look back on the life you've led
and you think, yes, perhaps
indeed I am better off dead.
Perhaps I should have gotten a dog,
perhaps I should have made a friend,
perhaps I should have loved and
even been loved in return,
not by a dog but by a female?
Would it all then have been worthwhile?
Would her aging frail body be lying
next to mine, not young and beautiful.
but old and decrepit, like my own?
Would there be grandchildren
standing there, wide-eyed, curious,
waiting for me to expire,
wondering if I would leave them
something in my will?
Should I have sat on benches and fed
pigeons peanuts from a paper sack?
Should I have composed an epic
classic modernist poem,
something to leave behind,
not that it would matter to me
after that final rattle
from my tobacco-ravaged lungs,
after that final losing battle
with existence?
These are the questions I ask
now while I am young,
and I will ask them still when I am old,
about to die as I have lived,
a dunce,
fifty million moments
allegedly experienced,
until this final one,
just once,
then done."
Milford stopped. He had run out of words.
"Is that it?" said Miss Blackbourne.
"Yes," said Milford. "I'm afraid so."
"Not bad," she said.
"Really?"
"Yes. Mind you, I didn't say good."
"No, of course not."
"But the first step towards being good is not being bad. There's only one thing now possibly standing in the way of your becoming a great poet, which is the only sort of poet worth being."
"Yes," said Milford.
"Do you know what that one thing is?"
"A lack of talent?"
"Precisely. Because all the study and dedication and hard work in the world mean nothing if you haven't got what it takes to begin with. How are you feeling with those mushrooms by the way?"
Milford had forgotten about the mushrooms, but now he was reminded.
"Now that you mention it," he said, "I feel as if my brains are pressing against the walls of my skull. I also feel that all my thoughts are made of Jell-O, and that my consciousness is made of mud. I just remembered that I also smoked hashish, which might have been a mistake. And I feel as if any moment I might fly away, through the ceiling and out into the dark interstellar reaches of outer space, for all eternity."
"But other than that, you feel okay?"
"Yes, I suppose so."
"Then you'll just have to ride it out. Think of it as like a rollercoaster ride. Frightening while you're on the ride, but eventually it comes to an end."
"I feel as if this might never end."
"Don't worry, it will. Sooner or later. Just as your life will."
Milford realized his cigarette had burned down and gone out. Was it worth the trouble to light up another one?
The waitress named Ruthie was standing there.
"Another round?"
"Yes, Ruthie," said Miss Blackbourne. "Thank you."
With a feeling akin to horror, Milford realized that he had to urinate, yet again. Why did people in movies and novels never urinate, when it seemed to him that his entire life was an unending roundelay of trips back and forth to bathrooms and public toilets, or, in a pinch, to dark alleyways.
"Excuse me, miss," he said to the waitress, "where is the men's room?"
"Go to the end of the bar, then turn right. You'll see a narrow hallway. Go in there and the second door you'll see on the left is the men's room."
"The end of the bar?"
"It wouldn't be the middle of the bar, would it?"
"No, I suppose not."
Milford stood up, almost knocking his chair over.
"I'll be right back," he said to Miss Blackbourne.
"I've heard that before," she said.
"Excuse me," he said to the waitress.
"You sure you know the way now? Don't need me to lead you by the hand?"
"No, I think I can make it on my own."
"Famous last words," she said.
Milford stepped around her and headed off into the smoke and the babble and the jukebox music.
How hard could it be to find a men's room?
He didn't want to answer that, but forged ahead, just as his ancestors had, carrying their spears, over hill and dale and through dark forests.
{Kindly go here to read the unexpurgated "adult comix" version in A Flophouse Is Not a Home, profusely illustrated by the illustrious rhoda penmarq…}
