The Pizza Poet     It's him. The pizza poet. A thin young chap with a pizza delivery man's hat, ready to take your order. The pizza poet. The existential mozzarella man with a melancholy expression of loneliness and despair. "What is your order, sir?" his face seems to say reluctantly to the public. He is wearing a pair of gray corduroys, a black turtleneck sweater, a black scarf and, of course, that stupid looking hat, worn by so many pizza delivery men. His feet are concealed by a pair of old construction work boots which he inherited from his grandfather.

    The pizza poet is making another house call. There is an old lady, living in the suburbs, and she want to order a poem about her cats. "I want a poem about my cats Ruthy and Ricky," she says to the pizza poet as he smokes a cigarette. The woman looks like she is going to die soon but she wants to immortalize her cats. And the pizza poet is the perfect man for the job. He knows how to please old ladies. "Yes, I see," he says, trying to appear very enthusiastic. "Ruthy and Ricky...H'm, would you like some mice with that?" "Of course, of course," says the old lady. She is wearing one of those summer dresses, which you can find on sale at most department stores. She looks like she is half out of her mind. But what do we really know about people? So mice it will be! The pizza poet writes the order on his note pad. What else? What else does she want? Maybe she wants a kitty litter box. Yes, of course, that too! And don't forget Ruthy's white fur and Ricky's black. And the vet's name. Dr. Murray Bernstein. The pizza poet will write it all down on his pad. And then he will collect the money. It will be $1 per line. The lady wants thirty lines. "Thirty dollars, please," says the pizza poet apologetically. He feels like he's robbing the poor old lady but he has to do it. He has to survive. So he will write a few lines about the lousy cats to keep her happy. "I love the way that Ruth and Ricky purr,/each time I come to pet the bastards' fur..." he thinks to himself with a smirk. "I'll just change the word bastards to some other word and I'm in business. Ha, ha, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha...! I'm just a fake and you'll always know it,/that's why they always call me a bloody pizza poet!" The pizza poet takes the money and leaves the old lady's home with tears in his eyes. He detests the human race for making him do it, but that's his job. To take orders from the public. "Life is suffering," he says with a Kierkegaardian expression on his face. "That's it. I'm just a prisoner in my existential cesspool. Ay! Ay! Ay-ay-ay!"

    The pizza poet is walking along the empty city streets. He knows that he has to return to his lousy apartment and start working on the cat poem. It's due tomorrow. For Ruthy's birthday. He wants to scream. "YOU LOUSY BASTARDS! HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO A SENSITIVE INDIVIDUAL LIKE MYSELF?! HAVE YOU NO SHAME?!" But he owes his landlord a lot of money, so he has to write the bloody poem. "Scotch! I need a bottle of Scotch! I can't do this shit without really getting shitfaced!" The pizza poet walks into one of the nearest package stores and picks up a pint of Scotch whiskey.
He gets another half-pint of bourbon in case it's not enough to get him through the night.

    He goes back to his shabby apartment, opens the Scotch and begins to drink. Gulp, gulp, gulp... Suddenly a lot of ideas begin to pour into his head and he starts writing. Ode to Ruthy and Ricky. So it goes:

                                                                Ode to Ruthy and Ricky

I love the way that Ruth and Ricky purr
Each time I come to pet the pranksters' fur...     The poem continues describing their adeptness at catching mice, their visits to the vet, their magnificent owner, their kitty litter box, which is always fresh and clean, and so on--in a sickly cheerful and elevated tone, not unlike the one that's used in a TV commercial. So there you have it. Thirty lines. The old lady will be happy.

    The pizza poet is drunk by now and nothing seems to matter anymore. He is free. That is until the booze wears off. Then back to the nightmarish, Kafkaesque reality. Back to the old order taking. "OH MY GOD!" he screams. He grabs his head with both of his arms and begins to roll on the carpet of the small room of his apartment. "GOD, HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?! A PIZZA POET! WHO COULD HAVE THOUGHT I WOULD BE JUST ANOTHER LOUSY FUCKING PIZZA POET?!!"

    He begins to cry and yell, as the neighbors knock on the wall. "SHUT UP! WE'RE TRYING TO GET SOME SLEEP HERE!" The pizza poet puts on his gray raincoat and gets out of his apartment. It's mid-October and the cold October wind blows in his face, as he walks along the streets in the night. He finished his Scotch and now he opens the bourbon. O the evil night! O the night of prostitutes and broken windows! O the night of the homeless and forgotten! O the starry night indifferent
to the suffering dogs! O the Dostoyevskian night! O the night of nightmares in neon light display windows!...

    The pizza poet passes an old man, rummaging for something to eat in the garbage. He passes a prostitute in black high-heeled shoes and a black leather miniskirt. He walks by, oblivious to the whole world. "BLOODY BASTARDS!" He sees a young couple, making out in a fancy red sports car, which makes him feel even more desperate. He remembers the time when he was seventeen and some girl took a fancy to his poetry. But it's over now. She married a soccer player and the most popular guy in school. "BLOODY BASTARDS! I'LL SHOW YOU!" He breaks into a hysterical laughter and jumps up and down, pointing his middle finger at the sky. Suddenly he collapses on the grass of a sidewalk, totally exhausted and totally drunk. And in a few seconds he's dead asleep.
 
 

* * * * *





    The next morning the pizza poet wakes up with a hangover, not remembering what had happened to him. He finds two empty bottles next to him and a small pile of dog shit. "HOW LUCKY! AT LEAST I DIDN'T STEP INTO THE DOG SHIT!" He gets up and looks around. He could have been arrested for sleeping on the lawn, but apparently the cops were not driving in the area during the night. "SHIT! I HAVE TO DELIVER THE CAT POEM TO THE OLD LADY!" He rushes back to the apartment, takes the poem out of his typewriter and goes out again. He gets into his old VW bug and delivers the poem. He's a few minutes late. Ruthy is already wearing her birthday bow tie, waiting for her favorite cat food to be opened. The lady is thrilled to death about the poem and gives the pizza poet two more dollars for a job well done.

    So now he has to wait for another order. The bloody landlord took all that he has for the month's rent and he is broke again. And where else could he find another old lady who would pay him $1 per line? "BASTARDS! BASTARDS! BASTARDS!" he screams. He has tried suicide before but was unsuccessful. And he is too much of a coward to use a gun. And he's been writing too many letters to his mother, asking her for money. Ever since his parents divorced, his mother has been receiving only $400 a month from her ex-husband, who works as a banker. "BASTARDS! BLOODY BASTARDS!" He gets very excited and runs his car into a tree. "OH SHIT!" He gets out of a car and finds it totally smashed. It's smoking with a strange smoke, followed by an explosion. "SHIT!!! SHIT!!! SHIT!!!"

    The pizza poet walks along the streets once again. It's all hopeless, he thinks, just like in a Kafka story. No money, no job, no woman. Just that cruel, empty feeling in the pit of his stomach. It's over. Gonzo. History. Kaput. He might as well forget that dream of a small villa somewhere in Southern Italy. Ay! Ay-ay-ay! Play it again, maestro! Play your sad songs of the weeping willow in Massachusetts! Life is just a cruel joke, played upon innocent people, tyrannized by the government. And the existentialists revel in this pain. Bloody Sartre! Bloody Camus! The autumn air is full of their angst and their tobacco smoke.
But look! Suddenly he sees an old friend Joe, who works delivering pizza in the neighborhood. "Hey pizza poet!" Joe yells, "How's your poetry coming? Have you taken any orders lately?"

    "Oh shit, Joe, don't remind me! I'm feeling quite lousy and I'm going out of my mind. My car's totaled, I'm out of money and I have no love life. I think I'm turning into some kind of nihilist."

    "Relax, pizza poet. Just take it easy. I think there is a way out. Look at me. Do you think I'm in love with my goddamn job?! Delivering pizza all day for peanuts. All I ever wanted in my life was to be a musician. Look, pizza poet, I've got a great idea. You see my pizza delivery car here. I could deliver my pizzas and you could write your poems. A poem in thirty minutes. Quick service for all kinds of poetry. Romantic, social, political, religious, you name it. Trust me. Just put an ad in the paper, and I'll help you get customers. GET YOUR POETRY AND YOUR PIZZA IN JUST A MATTER OF MINUTES! Think of the possibilities, pizza poet. In a short time we could make enough money to get out of this hell hole!"

    "Great idea, Joe! We'll show those bastards!" the pizza poet smiles sneeringly, excited by the prospect that he'll be free at last. "I'll start working on it right away. O Joe, you're my savior! What would I do without you?!" he says, running back to the apartment. In a few minutes the advertisement is completed:

GET YOUR PIZZA AND YOUR POEM WITH JOE &
RAOUL, YOUR PIZZA POETS. Get your sausage and
iambic pentameters right here! Romance with a crispy crust
or pepperoni with a social conscience in 30 minutes. Prices
are reasonable and payable on delivery. Extra cheese or extra
lines on request. Call us at 777-5533 (ask for Joe).       The advertisement appears in the local paper and the pizza poet and his partner Joe are now in business, awaiting a call from their first customer. They are sitting at Lou's pizzeria. Lou is a fat Italian owner of the place, who's been sending Joe on pizza runs for the last three years. He doesn't suspect that Joe has organized a pizza poetry business in his restaurant but Joe's services have always been dirt-cheap, so he never complained about his work.

    The phone rings and it's a call from the first customer. "Joe, get your ass over here!" the owner shouts.

    "I'm coming, I'm coming," says Joe, rushing to the phone.

    "So you are the pizza poets," says a woman's voice.

    "Yes, we are Joe and Raoul. What can we do for you, ma'am?"

    "I would like a medium pizza with sausage and mushrooms and a get-well poem for my very  sick mother."

    "How many lines would you like, ma'am?"

    "Oh, I don't know. A dozen or so, I guess."

    "Anything you might want in a poem?"

    "Oh, just use your imagination."

    "A poem and a pizza coming right up. That will take about thirty minutes."

    Joe calls Raoul, the pizza poet. "All right, Raoul. Get your ass in gear. We need a get-well poem for someone's sick mother, about a dozen lines or so. Make it snappy!" He goes to the owner and tells him that he needs a medium pizza with sausage and mushrooms. While they are waiting for the pizza, the pizza poet takes out his pen and paper and begins to write:

Get well, my dear mother,
You mean so much to me,
Like a sister to a brother,
Like honey to a bee...     "All right, all right, I'm all done," the pizza poet says to his partner after about fifteen minutes. And they are off on their first pizza poetry run. They deliver the poem and the pizza to the woman and she pays them for the cost of the pizza plus the additional twenty dollars for the poem. "Not bad, not bad at all," says Joe to his partner. "Now we have to wait for more customers."

    Their next customer is an insurance company, selling life insurance to young people under thirty. They also have an extensive medical coverage, which they want to be included in the poem. In addition, they want a large pizza with anchovies and extra cheese. "Bloody bastards!" yells the pizza poet, "Joe, how could you do this to me?! I'm a bloody poet, not an insurance salesman!"

    "C'mon, asshole. We want to get out of this hell hole! Start writing!" Joe says to his partner.

    "All right, you bastard. But I'm warning you. I can't take this anymore. I AM A POET. Maybe the world knows me as the pizza poet who fills the orders of the public, but I HAVE A SOUL."

    "To hell with your soul, Raoul. We need the money."

    So the pizza poet is off, writing a poem for the insurance company:

My friends, I give you my assurance
That everybody needs insurance...     So it went. The pizza poet and his partner received more and more orders from various people, organizations, companies, corporations, and even the underworld—all wanting to be heard. And there were the Moonies, the Hare Krishnas, peace activists, ecologists, scientologists, astrologers, the Proctology Association, the Ku Klux Klan, the CIA, the FBI, Communists, the Black Panthers, the Retarded Relief Organization, nasal researchers, saviors of the whales, the New Church of Jesus and Gurdjiev, the Young Cosmonauts, a rape crisis center, the Rockers for Jesus, dentists, the Gynecological Liberation Army, THE STARVING WORLD, INC., etc., etc.

    Everybody wants a poem. Everybody needs the pizza poet. And everybody wants it fast. Come on, pizza poet! Write us a few lines! And we want it on our table in thirty minutes. And don't forget the pepperoni and the extra cheese. And we need some Coca-Cola, too. So the pizza poet wrote and wrote and in time he became very rich. And now he's living in a small villa by the sea somewhere in Southern Italy. And he changed his name. And he wrote a poem called The World Is Full of Bastards. And the IRS officials are looking for him because he owes a lot of money to the government.

                    PIZZA POET! PIZZA POET! WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOU?!
 

                                                                                                                        January 16, 1988
                                                                                                                     --Alexander Shaumyan