the angel that pushed his wheelchair long ago he edited a little magazine it was up in San Francisco during the beat era during the reading-poetry-with-jazz experiments and I remember him because he never returned my manuscripts even though I wrote him many letters, humble letters, sane letters, and, at last, violent letters; I'm told he jumped off a roof because a woman wouldn't love him. no matter. when I saw him again he was in a wheelchair and carried a wine bottle to piss in; he wrote very delicate poetry that I, naturally, couldn't understand; he autographed his book for me (which he said I wouldn't like) and once at a party I threatened to punch him and I was drunk and he wept and I took pity and instead hit the next poet who walked by on the head with his piss bottle; so, we had an understanding after all. he had this very thin and intense woman pushing him about, she was his arms and legs and maybe for a while his heart. it was almost commonplace at poetry readings where he was scheduled to read to see her swiftly rolling him in, sometimes stopping by me, saying, "I don't see how we are going to get him up on the stage!" sometimes she did. often she did. then she began writing poetry, I didn't see much of it, but, somehow, I was glad for her. then she injured her neck while doing her yoga and she went on disability, and again I was glad for her, all the poets wanted to get disability insurance it was better than immortality. I met her in the market one day in the bread section, and she held my hands and trembled all over and I wondered if they ever had sex those two. well, they had the muse anyhow and she told me she was writing poetry and articles but really more poetry, she was really writing a lot, and that's the last I saw of her until one night somebody told me she'd o.d.'d and I said, no, not her and they said, yes, her. it was a day or so later sometime in the afternoon I had to go to the Los Feliz post office to mail some dirty stories to a sex mag. coming back outside a church I saw these smiling creatures so many of them smiling the men with beards and long hair and wearing bluejeans and most of the women blonde with sunken cheeks and tiny grins, and I thought, ah, a wedding, a nice old-fashioned wedding, and then I saw him on the sidewalk in his wheelchair tragic yet somehow calm looking greyer, a profile like a tamed hawk, and I knew it was her funeral, she had really o.d.'d and he did look tragic out there. I do have feelings, you know. maybe tonight I'll try to read his book.