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Alternative Reel Poets Corner
Dan Fante
Dan Fante was born and raised in Los Angeles. At nineteen he flunked out of school and hit the road, winding up in New York City for twelve years where he worked at a hundred shit jobs and drank himself into numerous arrests and bad marriages.
Once sober he began to walk on water and write insane, first-person novels and plays. Today he lives in Arizona with his wife Ayrin and five year old son, Michelangelo Giovanni Fante. Fante hopes one day to learn to play the harmonica.
Dan Fante's Website: www.danfante.net
For Mark
Walk with only words and books
as your friend
Dream the dreams of deviant dead writer saints
who coming before you drowned the pain
of their purest hearts in vats of gin
like a flailing unloved cat
Embrace selfishness and joblessness
And glue your ass hopelessly to the evilest drunken crack whore
Who’d trade your balls in a second
For the guy at the end of the bar
With the pitted face
And a fifty-dollar bill
Do not be courageous
remember that all men are fools
and liars
soulless captives of their own
blood-stained necessity
And forgive nothing
Then maybe one day
Like me
Your feet aching and your skull still raw
From last nights festivities
You’ll kick over a box
Or turn a page
And finds yourself
Face to face
With the blurry eyes of God
Parrots
Broke again
and
car-less
and hoping to mooch a free month in Malibu
I discovered that now there are wild parrots breeding on Point Dume
In Malibu
Big
loud noisy green fuckers
laughing in the high trees - following me up the road in the afternoon
sun from the highway
chattering their non-sense like a orchestra in warm-up chaos
This time I'm coming home with all that I own in a plastic bag
along with my typewriter and my taste for gin
Mom opened the door
and smiled when she saw me
and
that night we laughed about the parrots and talked on endlessly
about
Dickens and Rupert Brooke and Mallay
and that jerk T.S. Elliot
And I went off to the spare bedroom
drunk on free gin
sad for my old man's fading ghost
and thanking Jesus there was one person left alive
who'd still listen to my
bullshit
MOM AT EIGHTY NINE
Today
at the home
I read her some of my new stuff
while she squinted at me – straining to hear
My savvy mouth sputtering out
chain-saw syllables
beneath those perfect and unspoiled steel-blue eyes
This ancient ex-editor
who’s read more and knows more about writing and poetry
than I’ll ever hope to know
Five minutes into it – looking up – I said, “Well whaddya think?”
She seemed distracted
ten thousand brow wrinkles – flattened out – then returned
“Do you still have that phones sales job,” she said
“No Ma, I don’t have a day gig anymore – writing is all I do now”
“Well, get one, for chrissake,” she hissed –
“and help me up – I need to get to the bathroom”
Saturday
I met the meanest bastard starving cat
while sitting with a book, on a bench
at Venice Beach
He saw me and came up
white
with one green eye and one yellow eye
and a fresh slash on his scarred ear
Angry as a wounded wolf he kept his distance
and his look said
feed me or fuck off
that bench you’re on ins my territory
What he didn’t know is that I know desperate too
and crazy
and what emptiness and aloneness and rage can to
when you’ve got nothing but your own pain in your pockets
and your home is a busted-out 1978 Pontiac parked in and alley in West L.A.
and the voice in your mind is carving you up and killing more of you off each day
and you wake up and drink more rat-piss wine and God becomes a guy coming out of the 7-11 handing you chump change toward another fucking jug and fear is your finest feeling and all love is dead and all time is dead and even your eyes stink and your gut is bloated with the screaming voices of those you hate and the only real sanity there is can be found in the small miracle of sucking back one more drink
That mean white cat didn’t know that I’ve been cut too
from the same cloth
the only difference between us
is twenty years and my typewriter
2002
Now that I’ve written
ten years worth of books and plays
and given up booze
and filthy glorious pornography
and my clothes don’t stink from booze from sleeping in my car last night
and my hair is thinner and I’m twenty pounds to fat
and deep in my fifties with return calls to make and responsibilities
and the arguments I have with cops are no longer about bail
or unpaid warrants
or where I hid my gun
I now feel qualified to testify that nothing has changes
that this thing that all my life within me has ticked and squirmed
this unfilled hole -
this need to yell out and change things and never be satisfied
this voice that has survived jails and three divorces and frequent attempted
suicide
and bankruptcy
and dozens of self-improvement weekends
This rage still guides my vision
and demands that I go head first against my life
like a fool
in
search
of
a
pure
white
flame
About POET'S CORNER:
Charles Bukowski once remarked, “I have just read the immortal poems of the ages and come away dull. I don’t know who’s at fault; maybe it’s the weather, but I sense a lot of pretense and poesy footwork: I am writing a poem, they seem to say, look at me! Poetry must be forgotten; we must get down to raw paint, splatter...” The highly talented writers featured in Alternative Reel’s Poets Corner share Bukowski’s vision as their writing seeks out new literary frontiers, exploring the raw underbelly of modern society in the process. Eclectic, offbeat, humorous and often disturbing, the poetry collected here is not for the squeamish, so if you were actually expecting Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost or Emily Dickinson, please exit now. Everyone else, we suggest that you open up a bottle of cheap red wine and explore Poets Corner!
Interested in featuring your poetry in Poets Corner? Just email us at altreel@gmail.com with some samples of your work.
Dedicated to Ray Bremser [1934-98]
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