we went outside and the owl

was gone.

damn the lonely people

I may never see an owl

again.

Dostoevsky

against the wall, the firing squad ready.

then he got a reprieve.

suppose they had shot Dostoevsky?

before he wrote all that?

I suppose it wouldn’t have

mattered

not directly.

there are billions of people who have

never read him and never

will.

but as a young man I know that he

got me through the factories,

past the whores,

lifted me high through the night

and put me down

in a better

place.

even while in the bar

drinking with the other

derelicts,

I was glad they gave Dostoevsky a

reprieve,

it gave me one,

allowed me to look directly at those

rancid faces

in my world,

death pointing its finger,

I held fast,

an immaculate drunk

sharing the stinking dark with

my

brothers.

my computer

“what?” they say, “you got a

computer?”

it’s like I have sold out to

the enemy.

I had no idea so many

people were prejudiced

against

computers.

even two editors have

written me letters about

the computer.

one disparaged the

computer in a mild and

superior way.

the other seemed

genuinely

pissed.

I am aware that a

computer can’t create

a poem.

but neither can a

typewriter.

yet, still, once or

twice a week

I hear:

“what?

you have a

computer?

you?”

yes, I do

and I sit up here

almost every

night,

sometimes with

beer or

wine,

sometimes

without

and I work the

computer.

the damn thing

even corrects

my spelling.

and the poems

come flying

out,

better than

ever.

I have no

idea what causes

all this

computer

prejudice.

me?

I want to go

the next step

beyond the

computer.

I’m sure it’s

there.

and when I get

it,

they’ll say,

‘hey, you hear,

Chinaski got a

space-biter!”

“what?”

“yes, it’s true!”

“I can’t believe

it!”

and I’ll also have

some beer or

some wine

or maybe nothing

at all

and I’ll be

85 years old

driving it home

to

you and me

and to the little girl

who lost her

sheep.

or her

computer.

thanks to the computer

you write a bad poem and you just

press the “delete” key and watch the

lines vanish as if they had never been,

no ripping pages out of the typer,

balling them up and tossing them into the

wastebasket.

the older I get the more I delete.

I mean, if I see nothing in a work, what

will the reader see?

and the computer screen is a tough judge,

the words sit and look back at you,

with the typewriter you don’t see them

until you pull out the

page.

also, the keyboard on a computer is

more efficient than that on the

typer, with the computer the thoughts

leap more quickly from your mind to your

fingers, to the screen.

is this boring?

probably.